266
Latourette
Tomorrow is here
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TOMORROW IS HERE
TOMORROW
IS HERE
THE MISSION AND WORK OF THE CHURCH
AS SEEN FROM THE MEETING OF
THE INTERNATIONAL MISSIONARY COUNCIL
AT WHITBY, ONTARIO, JULY 5-2^., 1^47
KENNETH SCOTT LATOURETTE
and
WILLIAM EICHEY HOGG
PUBLISHED FOB. THB
International Missionary Council
by FRIENDSHIP PRESS: NEW YORK
KENNETH SCOTT LATOURETTE, Ph.D., D.D.,
LittJD., LL.D., a native of Oregon, received his academic
training at Linfield College and at Yale University. After
serving as a traveling secretary for the Student Volunteer
Movement, he taught for two years at Yale-in-China, Chang-
sha. He was a lecturer and assistant professor of history at Reed
College and for four years an associate and then a full professor
of history at Denison University. Since 1921, Dr. Latourette
has been teaching at Yale University, where he is the D. Willis
James Professor of Missions and Oriental History. During the
autumn of 1947 he gave the Cadbury Lectures at the Univer-
sity of Birmingham, England. He is president of the American
Historical Association.
Dr. Latourette has made extensive studies in and has had
first-hand contacts with the international mission movement
and is the author of many well known books on missions and
other subjects, among them being his monumental seven-
volume History of the Expansion of Christianity ; Missions To-
morrow-, The Chinese; Their History and Culture -, The History
of Japan (1947), and A Short History of the Far East. He at-
tended the Madras meeting of the International Missionary
Council in 1938 as well as the meeting of that organization
held at Whitby, Ontario, in the summer of 1947.
WILLIAM RICHEY HOGG, B.A., B.D., a Pennsylvanian,
was educated at Duke University and Yale University. He is at
present the Dwight Fellow of Yale Divinity School, majoring
under Dr. Latourette in the Graduate School of Yale Uni-
versity. His doctoral dissertation, A History of the International
Missionary Council, is expected to be completed before he
leaves for China in 1949 as a missionary under the auspices of
the Board of Missions of the Methodist Church. He is a mem-
ber of the National Committee of the Interseminary Move-
ment and has spent a year as its traveling secretary, visiting
one hundred and seventeen seminaries in the United States
and Canada.
COPYRIGHT, 1948, BY THE INTERNATIONAL MISSIONARY COUNCIL
Printed in the United States of America
To
JOHN R. MOTT
Quorum pars magna fuit
CONTENTS
PREFACE
Chapter One
THE WORLD OF TOMORROW IS HERE i
Revolution Is Here, 2
The Decline of Western Europe and the Freeing of Sub-
ject Peoples, 3
The Growing Power of the Nation State, 5
Suffering and Uncertainty and the Search for Security, 6
Overstrain and Weariness, 9
An Age of Contrasting Harshness and Kindness, 10
Racial and Communal Tension and Conflict \ 12
War and Efforts to Curb War, 13
The Decay and Growth of Religions, 14
Our Fluid and Urgent World, 16
Chapter Two
TOE CHURCH OF TOMORROW IS HERE 17
A History of Advances Following Recessions, 17
The Sweep of the World Church, 18
Western Europe, 19
Central and Eastern Europe, 22
The British Isles, 24
Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, 25
The United States, 25
Latin America, 26
The British West Indies, 28
Islands of the Pacific, 28
Indonesia, 29
Vlll CONTENTS
Malaya, 31
The Philippines, 32
Japan, 33
Korea, 35
China, 36 ,
Sia m, 38
Burma, 38
Ceylon, 39
7/K&0, 39
T^ Afozr East, 41
Africa South of the Sahara, 42
> of Summary, 43
THE REALITY OF THE FELLOWSHIP 46
TA<? International Missionary Council, 49
Edinburgh, igio, 50
Tfo International Missionary Council's Formation, 1921, 51
The Jerusalem Conference, 1928, 52
T!&<? Madras Conference, 1938, 53
World War II and Orphaned Missions, 54
The Whitby Conference, 1947, 55
Whitby's Setting, 56
E/jrafy KB Diversity, 57
Whitby and Its Predecessors, 59
TA? Post-Mott Era, 60
y4 PFbrW Purview, 61
Women of the Younger Churches, 63
Whitby out of Session, 64
y4 Conference in Tomorrow's World, 65
r/, 66
CONTENTS IX
A New Relationship, 67
News Reporters' Impressions, 70
Whitby's Final Days, 70
Chapter Four
INTERPRETING THE GOSPEL IN THE NEW DAY 73
The Eternal Gospel, 75
Interpreting the Gospel in the Tomorrow That is Here,
81
The Impossible But Assured Goal, 85
Chaffer Five
THE ETERNAL GOSPEL REALIZED IN LIFE 88
A Chinese, 89
A Cuban, 92
An Indian, 93
A Filipina, 95
A Belgian, 97
An Indian, 100
Chapter Six
PARTNERS IN OBEDIENCE 105
Partners in Finance, 109
Partners in Personnel, 114
The New Missionary, 116
Partners in Policy and Administration, 118
X CONTENTS
Chapter Seven
NEXT STEPS 121
Evangelism, 121
Literature, Visual Aids, Movies, Radio, 122
Race Relations, Rural Life, the Family, 122
International Relations, 123
Schools and Hospitals, 124
Personnel, 124
The Orphaned Missions Fund, 126
Money, 126
Priorities, 127
The Ecumenical Reformation, 129
Chapter Eight
MR. AND MRS. CHRISTIAN ENTER TOMORROW
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
A REFERENCE LIST
PREFACE
TOMORROW IS HERE. We are in the midst of a new age.
For years we have been saying that we are living in the twilight
of a dying world and that the new world is about to be born.
We have been hearing descriptions of what that new world is to
be. We have attempted to say what the Christian program in
this world of the future should be. Indeed, eleven years ago one
of the authors of this book wrote a little volume that he called
Missions Tomorrow. That tomorrow has come. The new age has
dawned. We may not like this new age. It has in it much of
uncertainty and even of terror. These are among its outstanding
features. Yet all of us who are now living must face this to-
morrow. We cannot escape it.
We who are Christians have the privilege — and the obliga-
tion — of entering the new world as the bearers of the Gospel.
By the very fact that we have accepted the Gospel — if we have
really accepted it and are not passively assenting to it as an
inheritance from Christian parents and a Christian environment
— we are saying that it is true and that in it are the secret of
life and the hope of mankind.
As Christians, in a very special sense we affirm that tomorrow
is here. We pray, as our Lord taught us: "Thy kingdom come,
thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven." We look for the
coming of God's kingdom. By that we mean, as the most familiar
petition of our faith has implied, a human society, a social order,
in which God is unquestionably king, in which his will is fully
done, in which men are perfect as their Father in heaven is per-
fect. Even the most casual glance at our world reveals the tragic
fact that God's will is not fully done. The mass of mankind is still
Xll PREFACE
in rebellion against its rightful ruler. Yet even in the days of his
flesh our Lord declared that the kingdom of God was in the
midst of men and that it was possible even then for men to enter
it, as by a new birth. God's kingdom is a present reality. Yet it
is clear that it is not fully come and that it is also a future hope.
In this sense Christians affirm that God's kingdom, for the full
realization of which all creation groans and is in travail, has
already begun. It is by no means consummated or completed.
Yet it is already in the making. Even now the tomorrow for
which the Christian longs is in part here.
Both the new age and the presence in it of God's kingdom
were vividly seen in an event in the summer of 1947. Like so
much of the operation of God's spirit, this event was unspec-
tacular, and was vivid only to those who were prepared to ap-
preciate its significance. In the quiet village of Whitby, Ontario,
in the modest building of the Ontario Ladies' College, during
part of the month of July, a small company — only slightly over
a hundred in number — gathered under the auspices of the
International Missionary Council. Yet this company was from
forty nations and from many different races. It included Ger-
mans who only a few months before were regarded as enemies
by the governments of most of the delegates. About a third
were from what are often termed the "younger churches" —
those churches that have arisen from the missions of the past
century and a half. This in itself was a foreshadowing of the
world church, evidence that tomorrow is here. Today the over-
whelming majority of Christians are in the so-called "older
churches," those of Europe, America, and Australasia. That a
third of the Whitby gathering were from the "younger churches"
was a prophecy of the church that is to be, in which Euro-
PREFACE Xlll
pean and American memberships will no longer predominate.
The remarkable unity of the gathering was also striking
evidence that tomorrow is here. The delegates were from many
denominations — Anglican, Baptist, Lutheran, Congregation-
alist, Presbyterian, Methodist, and other denominations that
represent the opposites within Protestantism. Here were repre-
sentatives of what are generally regarded as exploited and
exploiting nations — Indians and British, Filipinos and Ameri-
cans, a Fijian and white Australians, Negroes from Africa, and
Belgians and English. Yet all worked and worshiped together
and discussed controversial issues with a harmony that seasoned
conference-goers deckred they had never seen equaled. Here
was that world church that faith tells us is to be — from every
kindred and tribe, with wide variety in forms of worship and
organization — knit together in love by simple faith in Christ
and unwavering loyalty to him.
Here, too, was quiet confidence born of the sense of the
presence of God's spirit. There was no blinking of the grim
facts of our tragic age. These were faced in all their starkness.
Coming from almost all parts of the world as the delegates did,
many from lands devastated by war and some with recent
experience of concentration camps and prisons, they knew all
too well those phases of our age that for many of their con-
temporaries spell frustration and despair. Yet at Whitby, in
contrast, was a sense of high adventure and of undaunted hope.
The tomorrow that is here is even now the scene of God's
ceaseless redemptive love. The conference was marked by
resolute plans for giving the Gospel to the entire world. The
"evangelization of the world in this generation," not many
years before regarded as an obsolete shibboleth, was declared
XIV PREFACE
by the delegates to be both a possibility and an obligation.
It is the world, the Gospel, and the church as seen from
Whitby that constitute the theme of this little book. We who
write it had the high privilege of being at Whitby from the
initial session through the last of the committees that planned
the next steps ahead. Yet in it is no day-by-day report of a
conference. Such a transcription could never catch the full
spirit or significance of what was there. The book is, rather, an
attempt to portray the tomorrow that is here as it was seen
from that gathering. First we will endeavor to set forth the
world and the present state of the church the globe around as
they were described at Whitby. This will be followed by a
description of the company that gathered there and of the
historical development out of which it arose as the miniature of
the world church that is both already in being and is to be.
Then will come an account of the eternal Gospel of which the
church is the messenger. Finally there will be outlined the
plans that were laid at Whitby for carrying, out the church's
commission in the tomorrow that is already here.
By a strange coincidence, the name Whitby has an earlier
occurrence in the history of the church. In 664, there convened
in Whitby, England, a gathering at which a decision was
reached that helped to bring the church in England into
closely knit fellowship with the church on the adjacent conti-
nent, and thus into the company that embraced the Christians
of the Western world. In Whitby, Canada, in 1947, another
milepost was passed in the progress of a fellowship that is not
confined to Europe but is even now as wide as the inhabited
world. In that comparison and that contrast is vividly seen the
hope of the tomorrow that is here.
Chapter One
THE WORLD OF TOMORROW
IS HERE
r*T"*^HE WORLD THAT IS HERE IS ONE OF STRIKING CONTRASTS.
I It is one of fear and yet of hope. But this paradox has
JL been true in every age. Man's road has always been
rough. From the dawn of his existence he has been confronted
with peril, but peril that some of his number, through resource-
fulness and resolution, have turned into gain. Although he has
survived, as a well known recent play has reminded us, "by the
skin of his teeth," he has grown in numbers and in material
wealth. In the tomorrow that is here, danger and hope are
accentuated and combined to a peculiar degree. As never
before in recorded history, mankind is bound together in the
bundle of life. Ours is a shrunken world. Because of the prodi-
gious strides in transportation and communication during the
past century and a half, and especially during our generation,
the|human race has been knit into a perilous and contradictory
unity. The unity is one of discord, enhanced by the very feet
of forced intimate association. The disorders of $ne segment
affect the whole. If one member suffers, all the members suffer
with it. It is literally and tragically true that mankind may
destroy itself. Nevertheless, the possibilities for collective ad-
vance for the entire race were never so great.
This mixture of threat and opportunity displays a variety of
1 TOMORROW IS HERE
aspects, but it must be faced at the very outset of any attempt
to understand the tomorrow that is here. Those who gathered
at Whitby were well aware of it. Their ^discussions had it
consciously in the background.
'Revolution Is Here
First of all, the age is one of revolution. The old and familiar
are passing. The new is being born. Revolution is not a novel
human experience. It has been seen again and again ip^many
segments of mankind. What is without precedent is the degree
to which it is affecting every phase of man's life. Moreover, the
pace is quickening. Through most of the present century
revolution has been spectacular. It has been speeding up in
recent years. The revolution has its center in the Occident.
Here the old culture is dying and the new is not yet in being.
The familiar Western civilization is passing. Since in the past
four centuries it has spread throughout the earth, its disorders
are affecting all the race. A world civilization seems in the proc-
ess of birth, but the travail is sharp and the issue is not yet clear.
The revolution is in part political. It includes the disappear-
ance of ruling houses, once seemingly enduring features of the
political firmament but now almost forgotten — those of the
sultans of Turkey, of the Hohenzollerns, of the Hapsburgs, of
the Romanovs, of the Manchu imperial line, and of the House
of Savoy; and the substitution of quite different regimes —
those of the Young Turks, of the Second and the Third Reich
followed by Allied occupation and partition, of the various
states that once composed the Austrian Empire, of the Union
of Soviet Socialist Republics under the dictation of the Com-
munist party, of the Republic of China, and of the republic in
THE WORLD OF TOMORROW IS HERE 3
Italy. It embraces the collapse of the Japanese Empire and the
attempted remaking of the government of the home islands
under the supervision of the victors.
The revolution is even more pronounced in realms other than
political. It is evident in the progress of industrialization, in the
complete shift of the basis of education in China, in the threat-
ened disintegration of the family, in the breakup of the tribal
structure in Africa, in the decay of historic religions, as in
Turkey, China, Japan, and parts of Europe, and in the ac-
companying interrogation of long-accepted bases of morals.
These are but samples. The list could be greatly prolonged.
Revolution means the decline or disappearance of the old.
Now, as in other ages, it means suffering for many and some-
times even moral shipwreck for others. Yet it also gives oppor-
tunity for shaping a new and better order.
The Decline of Western Europe and the Freeing of Subject Peoples
Closely related phases of the revolution are the decline of
western Europe and the freeing of peoples who were once sub-
ject to the Occident.
Between four and five centuries ago western Europeans began
the expansion by which they have dominated the globe. Their
control was accelerated in the nineteenth century. Western
European peoples settled the Americas, Australia, and New
Zealand. They subdued most of Asia, Africa, and the islands
of the Pacific. The impact of the culture of western Europe was
the chief cause of the revolution among non-European cultures.
As we have suggested, western Europe is desperately ill.
Western civilization is passing. The two world wars of the
present century were symptoms of a deep-seated sickness, and
4 TOMORROW IS HERE
they aggravated that sickness. In the tomorrow that is here
western Europe will not have the proud superiority that so
recently seemed one of the axioms of the world scene.
For Christians the decline of western Europe is peculiarly
sobering. Western Europe has been the center of what we have
been accustomed to call Christendom. It is the region in which
Christianity has long been the prevailing religion, and from
which for the past five centuries it has had its chief spread. Does
this decline mean that Christianity, the historic center of its
power weakened, is to wane as a force in mankind? What does
it indicate of the ability of Christianity to save civilization?
These are two questions that will not down. We must recur
to them later.
With the decay of western Europe, the hold which that
portion of the world has had on non-European peoples is being
relaxed. European imperialism is waning. People after people,
long restive, are achieving their political independence. India,
Burma, and possibly Ceylon seem to be on their way out of the
British Empire. Eire has gained autonomy from Britain, and
Egypt is seeking it. Syria and Lebanon are independent of
France; Indo-China is demanding independence. Indonesia is
moving out from under Dutch control. Even the United States,
strong though it is, has heeded the trend, and has granted
independence to the Philippines, and is troubled by the agita-
tion in Puerto Rico, which demands either admission to the
Union as a state or full independence. China has freed herself
from fextraterritoriality and almost all other phases of the
"unequal treaties." In some European possessions south of the
Sahara, Africans are being granted a larger measure of self-
government. They are widely restive under the white man's
THE WORLD OF TOMORROW IS HERE 5
yoke. Only in Japan, Korea, and to a less degree in Manchuria
has the control of the Occident been recently augmented, and
that change in control has been either by the United States or
Russia, neither of which is a Western European power.
The freeing of non-Europeans can mean added disorder. On
the other hand, it can make for enhanced self-respect and
responsibility. As we are to see, these goals are already being
accompanied by the emergence of a world Christian com-
munity in which non- Western and Western Christians are in-
creasingly participating on the basis of equality.
The Growing Power of the Nation State
The new age is marked by the enhanced power of the state
and the progressive subordination to it of the individual. This
trend is seen most strikingly in countries under totalitarian
governments. It is also apparent in lands where something of
the freedom that characterized nineteenth-century democ-
racy survives. The progress of socialism in Great Britain and
western Europe, with the increase there and in the United
States of government control, is one of the most familiar
movements of our day.
This growing power of the state is closely allied with na-
tionalism. The state professes to be the bulwark of the nation
and to be inseparable from it. Patriotism is praised as the major
virtue. Loyalty to the nation is tacitly or openly held to take
precedence over loyalty to God. The individual is regarded as
existing for the sake of what is termed the commonweal, and
that commonweal is identified with the nation state.
Here, obviously, is a major threat to what the Christian holds
to be the true nature of man and man's primary allegiance. Yet
6 TOMORROW IS HERE
through, collective action by the state, if it is rightly employed,
can come the furthering of interests with which the Christian
is properly concerned — such as adequate food and clothing
for himself and others.
Suffering and Uncertainty and the Search for Security
Two of the most widely spread features of the tomorrow that
is here are suffering and uncertainty and the search for security.
Never has the sheer mass of physical distress been as moun-
tainous as today. Always mankind has known suffering. Always
man has faced hunger, cold, heat, and disease. Only the privi-
leged minority have been able to procure sufficient food,
clothing, and housing. Even they have not escaped illness and
death. Thanks to the machines and the science that the Oc-
cident has developed in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries,
millions in western Europe, the British Isles, the United States,
Canada, and Australasia have attained a higher standard of
physical comfort than the human race has heretofore known.
Yet in tragic paradox, more millions are starving or are near
starvation today than at any other time in history.
This suffering is the direct result of two things — war and
the recent vast increases in population, but in its most acute as-
pects it is largely a result of World War II. The exhausting con-
centration of effort on war and the destruction wrought by it
have brought want to untold millions in most of Europe and
Asia. Only a few countries, notably the United States and Can-
ada, are islands of prosperity in this sea of postwar want. Famine
and near-famine stalk abroad in Germany, in Austria, in Italy, in
much of the region east of the "iron curtain," in large segments
of India, and in many parts of China. Japan is desperately under-
THE WORLD OF TOMORROW IS HERE 7
nourished. Millions of displaced persons are among the major
tragedies that are the aftermath of the recent war. These include
not only those with whom we are vaguely familiar in Europe
but other millions as well, probably more numerous, in China
and Japan.
The situation is aggravated by a long-term growth in popula-
tion. A century and a half ago the total of the inhabitants of
the globe is said to have been about 850,000,000. It is now
estimated to be approximately 2,200,000,000. This is an increase
of about 260 per cent. Much of this increase has been in the
relatively vacant lands of the Americas, but a large proportion
of it has been in western Europe, where it has come as a result
of the industrialization and the nineteenth-century prosperity
of that region. Much of it, too, has been in India, Japan, and
Java, all of which seemed to have reached the saturation point
a hundred years -ago. Accurate figures are not obtainable for
China, but a vast increase in the birth rate of that land in the
relatively peaceful eighteenth century brought the population
to a total that the internal discords of the past century and
a half, and especially the past fifty years, have apparently not
reduced, although it has been maintained with incredible misery
to untold millions.
If peaceful economic cooperation among the peoples of the
world could be achieved, this persistent growth in numbers
would not be an insurmountable obstacle to a general rise in the
level of prosperity. In a world such as the one that is here, with
its accentuated international, interracial, and ideological ten-
sions, such growth augments the already dangerous friction and
so helps to create a vicious circle in which war and the threat of
war aggravate suffering, and suffering and the fear of suffering
8 TOMORROW IS HERE
augment the threat of war. Recovery from the destitution
wrought by World War II, even if that could be complete,
would not remove the menace of this prolonged multiplication
of the volume of mankind.
Partly because of this widespread suffering, the unlikelihood
of its early or even ultimate complete elimination, and the
possibility of its intensification and spread through increased
friction, both domestic and international, an air of uncertainty
prevails over much of the planet. It is striking in western
Europe and Great Britain, where the specter of unaccustomed
poverty is ever present, and the competition between Washing-
ton and Moscow seems to render erstwhile major powers helpless
pawns in the struggle between the two colossi. The friction is
also grave in India, where autonomy means division, riots, and
possible civil war. It is tragic in China, where inflation and
continued war between the National Government and the
communists cause further weakness and impoverishment and
the prospect of unrelieved gloom for many years to come. Even
the United States, powerful and remote from the privations
of Europe and Asia, does not feel secure. Its armaments are
larger than those during any previous time of peace, and in-
fluential elements of the population and the government clamor
loudly that they must be even greater.
This suffering and uncertainty, unequaled in their extent, are
paralleled by a widespread passion for security. It is partly for
this reason that men are willing to acquiesce in the enhanced
power of the state. They look to the government for insurance
against unemployment, for assurance of remunerative work,
for protection against foreign and domestic foes, for care in
sickness, and for orovision durinp- old acre. This demand for
THE WORLD OF TOMORROW IS HERE 9
security is no less insistent in the more prosperous lands than in
the countries where want is clamant.
Overstrain and Weariness
Much of the world shows the effect of the long physical,
nervous, and spiritual strain of the war. Sometimes the com-
parison is made with Convalescence from a long illness. The
powers of the body have been mobilized to combat the infec-
tion. When the disease has been conquered, the body is ex-
hausted and time is required for full recuperation. The parallel
is not exact, but it has in it much of truth. A large part of man-
kind was absorbed in World War II. Each side was straining
every effort to win. Men and women were working long hours,
were keyed up for endurance, and were giving beyond their
normal strength to the demands of the war machine. They were
buoyed up by the hope of victory or nerved by the desperate
fear of what defeat would mean. The end of the war, they
assumed, would at least bring relief. Many believed that victory
would usher in a halcyon era. They find that the end of the
shooting war has left a legacy of problems greater and more
complex than those besetting them on the eve of the conflict.
The vanquished are prostrate. Both Germany and Japan are
occupied by their recent foes, and their populations are in dire
physical want. Foreign troops are still on the soil of Italy, and
that unhappy land, poor before the war, has sounded new
depths of misery.
In many respects some of the ostensible victors are no better
off. The Chinese had looked forward to what they called re-
construction as though it were a golden age. They find that
the tomorrow that is here is one of even greater privation
IO TOMORROW IS HERE
than were the war years, and that the future now appears more
bleak than the present. France is distraught by internal dis-
sensions and domestic instability. In much of her colonial
empire she faces unrest that she is attempting to curb by costly
military action and further drain on her already overdrawn
reserves. Great Britain, most of her overseas investments spent
in the struggle to win the war, now a debtor rather than a
creditor nation, and under the hard necessity of curbing an
already limited domestic consumption to bring her exports
above the level of her imports, faces her long, uphill haul with
grim determination but with worn-out machinery and a tired
population. In the United States there is rising resentment at
the overseas burdens entailed by the unaccustomed "role of
continuing commitments in Europe and the Far East. Too little
is known of the details of the current Russian scene to give a
clear picture of what is happening there, but it is certain that
the incalculable loss of property and life caused by the German
invasion, and general war fatigue, impede the urgent rebuilding.
An Age of Contrasting Harshness and Kindness
The tomorrow that is here is harsh and cruel, and yet it is
marked by relief on an unprecedented scale.
The harshness is all too apparent. War is always accompanied
by cruelty and a decay in morals. It was to be expected that a
conflict as gigantic as World War II would bring, to a degree
heretofore unknown, inhumanity and the abandonment of
moral standards. That this has happened is all too clear. Vast
concentration camps with their unspeakable cruelties, the
virtual enslavement of millions of prisoners of war, rape on a
sickening scale in both Orient and Occident, the chronic dis-
THE WORLD OF TOMORROW IS HERE II
regard of sex controls, the deception and murder that ac-
companied resistance in occupied lands, dishonesty and corrup-
tion in private and governmental circles and in the armed
services, and the ruthless exploitation of conquered or recon-
quered areas, whether by the Japanese in China, the Chinese
in Formosa, or the Russians in much of Central Europe, are
instances all too familiar.
Yet relief has been given in proportions that for magnitude
are without precedent. It has -come through nongovern-
mental agencies. It has come through churches and such church-
related agencies as the American Friends Service Committee
and Church World Service. Scores of committees for the relief
of specific peoples have obtained vast sums in the form of
hundreds of thousands of voluntary gifts. Much has passed
from individual to individual, often at the cost of extreme
sacrifice, without the initiative or mediation of any organiza-
tion. Still larger sums, astronomical in their totals, have been
contributed by governments. Much of this financial aid has
come through UNRRA; much has come directly from single
governments and their civilian and armed representatives.
Partly because of its larger physical reserves the United
States has been the source of the major part of these funds.
However, the United States and the Americans have by no
means been the only givers. Substantial amounts have come
from other countries and peoples, and with far greater sacrifice.
A very substantial proportion, perhaps the larger part of the
relief, particularly that by governments, has been from pru-
dential rather than unselfish motives. For its own security, the
United States has believed help to be necessary for its former
enemies as well as for several of its recent allies. Yet in some of
II TOMORROW IS HERE
the relief the altruistic motive has been unquestionably domi-
nant. It has also been a factor even in that given by governments.
Racial and Communal Tension and Conflict
The tomorrow that is here is an age of tensions between racial
and cultural groups. The discrimination against Negroes prac-
tised by whites in the United States has long been chronic.
Unhappily, the tensions in South Africa have been even more
acute — between Bantu and white, Indian and white, and
Boer and Briton. One of the major tragedies of the day is the
way in which the ancient anti- Jewish feeling has been aggravated
and, because of it, unimaginable cruelties perpetrated. It is
estimated that in the past ten or twelve years one-third of the
Jews of the world have been exterminated. Although the Nazi
campaign for the elimination of the Jews has been ended by the
crushing of Hitler and his party, anti- Jewish feeling remains.
'In some areas, including the United States, it is probably in-
creasing. The intensification of the Arab-Jewish conflict in
Palestine is one of the more spectacular features of an uneasy
world. In India, Hindu-Moslem relations, long smoldering, are
in open conflagration. Although in some places the restrictions
placed by Hindu caste on the depressed classes have been
lightened, in other places they are rigidly held to. The wartime
treatment of Japanese in the United States and Canada is a
recent unhappy memory. The persecuting intolerance of com-
munists toward potential or active opposition, the anti-Protes-
tant measures of Roman Catholics in several countries where the
latter are dominant, and the vigorous efforts of Moslems to
curb Christian minorities in Egypt are phases of the same
unlovely intolerance of our day.
THE WORLD OF TOMORROW IS HERE 13
Here and there progress has been made toward relieving
injustices between groups. This, in general, is true of the treat-
ment of Negroes in the United States. Examples, too, are numer-
ous of Christians who have risked their lives to save Jews from
death. Yet, unfortunately, these are merely exceptions to the
general trend.
War and Efforts to Curb War
This generation has known the most widely devastating wars
in history. It has also seen the most ambitious organized efforts
in man's career to eliminate war and to bring order and even-
handed justice into relations between nations. World War I and
World War II successively involved in active fighting a larger
proportion of the earth's population than had any earlier wars.
The League of Nations and now the United Nations have
brought together the majority of mankind in structures that
have given opportunity not only for the peaceable settlement
of disputes but for the cooperation of the nations in furthering
various aspects of human welfare.
In the tomorrow that is here friction between nations re-
mains. Indeed, tension and the occasion for a major war among
the great powers are probably greater than they were on the eve
of either World War I or World War II. War weariness and the
vivid realization of what renewed war would mean are the chief
deterrents and insure a breathing space in which to make potent
the machinery for peace.
In this tomorrow, mankind, doubtful and even cynical
because of the apparent failure of the League of Nations, is,
with wistful and tempered hopefulness, venturing on the
United Nations. Through the United Nations, the governments,
14 TOMORROW IS HERE
pressed by the urgency of time, are hesitatingly and fomblingly
attempting to devise and agree on some method for controlling
atomic energy and for eliminating the lethal weapons that it
has made possible. With his ingenuity man has developed proc-
esses that can, if misdirected, destroy his flimsy civilization
and sweep him off the earth. From the standpoint of geologic
time and even of man's course on the planet, civilization is a
very recent development. It is obviously imperfect and frail.
Man releases the energies of nature far more quickly and easily
than he learns to handle himself. Terrified scientists, appalled
by the prospect of the destruction that their discoveries can
wreak, urge mankind to find a way to forfend disaster, while
mankind's leaders seek means of global social control
The Decay and Growth of Religions
Mankind is ill. The more thoughtful of the race realize that
the strains of our time are symptoms of a malady that is inherent
in the very constitution of man. Through the centuries man has
been seeking a cure for this illness. Sometimes he has attempted
to cure it by means of government. Often he has sought a cure
in religion. Latterly he has sought healing through programs for
the reorganization of state and society on the basis of philoso-
phies that we sometimes term ideologies and that have in them
basic conceptions of man and of the universe that are closely
akin to religion.
Always, too, there are the eternal questions that man asks
about his own nature and destiny, about the strange and poig-
nant struggle that he knows within himself, about the contrast
between his frailty and his aspiration for immortality, and about
the enigma of the meaning of his existence.
THE WORLD OP TOMORROW IS HERE 1 5
The tomorrow that is here is a mixture of the decay of old
religions to which man has looked for the answer to his enigma,
the emergence of new faiths and of irreligious secularism, the
stubborn resistance of some religions, and the amazing world-
wide growth of Christianity.
The present century has witnessed tht^dcclmt ^f^C^fu-
cianism, the system by which a fifth of the human race governed
its life. It has seen the fpxcible abandonment o£ the state
sponsorship pjf§Jimj^. In some lands, notably Ceylon and Siam,
Buddhism, long stagnant and slowly declining, has been rein-
forced by a nationalism that elevates it as a political and cultural
bond.
As we have earlier suggested, the real religio^fjJarge pro-
portion of mankind is nationalism. Nationalism has had a phe-
nomenal growth in the present century. In the tomorrow that
is on us it is increasing. In Russia, it is combined with com-
munism in an intense faith with crusading qualities. In Arab
lands, notably Egypt, it takes Islam as a symbol and intensifies
that historic religion.
Just now communism seems rampant. This is partly because
of its novelty, its promises, and the misery of mankind that leads
many persons to clutch at it as at a new Messiah, and partly
because of its skillful propaganda.
What we have called secularism is prevalent in many lands
and among many groups, both educated and uneducated. In
general it affirms that the good things of life are purely of this
world, that religion is irrelevant, ineffective, and even hamper-
ing, and that to obtain what he desires, man must depend on his
own efforts and the scientific processes that he has created.
In contradiction to these many trends is the phenomenal
1 6 TOMORROW IS HERB
growth of Christianity. In some areas numerical losses have been
encountered, but as a global movement Christianity is showing
striking gains. Here is a faith, many centuries old, that in con-
trast to other long-existant religions is growing apace.
Our Fluid and Urgent World
The age of which we are part is fluid and urgent. The wide-
spread revolution and the accompanying breakup of the old
order have put the world in flux. Mankind as a whole can be
shaped as never before. Will the growing world church rise to
the challenge? Partly because the age is in flux, the situation
will not permit delay. In great lands, notably China and Japan,
where groping peoples are singularly open to the Gospel, the
doors may begin to swing shut within a decade. In India, the
depressed classes, among whom the church has made its chief
gains, may move toward Islam or Hinduism, or both. In Africa
south of the Sahara, the rapid disintegration of the old structure
of life leaves millions adrift to be molded, perhaps for genera-
tions to come, by whatever forces can move into the vacuum
within the next few years. In the Occident, the center of man's
illness, where the familiar and heretofore dominant civilization
is passing, the new culture is painfully in birth. Communism is
gaining apace.
In this fluid and urgent world the church, now growing, must
move forward with accelerated pace. Soon after World War I a
prophetic Scot declared: "It is either the evangelization of the
world in this generation or the damnation of the world in this
generation." Events have proved that he foreshortened history
— that he was ahead of his time. His uncompromising alterna-
tive may well prove the choice in the tomorrow that is here.
Chapter Two
THE CHURCH OF TOMORROW
IS HERE
IN THIS TIME OF REVOLUTION THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH IS
growing. In a day when ancient civilizations are passing, the
Christian community, one of the oldest existing
associations, is becoming world-wide. In an age of turmoil, when
the nations are pulling apart and two world wars have wracked
mankind, the universal church is building a fellowship that is
above national boundaries and is knitting its members together
into a community of memory, of present healing and love, and
of hope.
This is the more remarkable since the church has been an
integral part of that Western civilization that is now dying. In
the tomorrow that is here, as in preceding yesterdays, Chris-
tianity is surviving the death of cultures with which it has been
intimately associated and, freed from ties that were embar^
rassing it, is moving out to fresh victories.
A History of Advances Following Recessions
At least three times earlier in its history Christianity has had
this experience. It is a significant commonplace of the Christmas
story that Jesus was born in the reign of the first Roman em-
peror, Caesar Augustus. Within its first five centuries Chris-
tianity had won the nominal allegiance of the overwhelming
1 8 TOMORROW IS HERE
majority of the population of the Roman Empire. But the
Roman Empire and its culture decayed, and Christianity, now
so closely associated with them, seemed doomed. Yet, after a
prolonged period of shock, Christianity, recovering, enlarged
its boundaries and helped to create a fresh culture, that of
Medieval Europe. Medieval Europe in turn died, and the
church appeared to share its fatal illness. However, the Christian
faith, recovering, broke the bonds of the now moribund culture,
burst forth in fresh life in the Reformation, and became a
builder of the civilization of Modern Europe. Toward the end
of the eighteenth century that civilization passed through a
major crisis. A partially new culture emerged, that of the nine-
teenth century. Again Christianity was threatened, and again,
moving out afresh in renewed power, it greatly enlarged its
geographic borders and its impact on mankind,
A scholar of our day is interpreting the long drama of human
history in terms of "challenge and response." Periodically groups
of mankind are confronted by new and difficult conditions.
Some groups succumb. Others, rising to the emergency, go on to
new achievements. The Christian church is the institution that
has most successfully displayed the vitality to meet each major
challenge and march on to fresh victories.
The Sweep of the World Church
At Whitby the sweep of the world church was vividly seen.
It was made to live partly because of the personnel — of which
more in the next chapter — and partly because its work was
summarized in reports of the delegates on the church in their
respective countries. For three successive days statement fol-
lowed statement until the churches of the entire globe were
THE CHURCH OF TOMORROW IS HERE 19
discussed. To reproduce all that was said would extend these
pages far beyond their proper length. We must, however,
attempt to give something of the picture, although in condensed
survey.
None of the speakers dodged discouraging aspects or difficul-
ties. If anything, these were stressed. Too many delegates at
the conference had seen the inside of prisons and concentration
camps to permit evasion. Yet throughout the verbal tour of the
globe the total impression these delegates gave was one of ur-
gency and hope. As one of the leaders put it, the dominant
note was "expectant evangelism."
Western Europe
Any survey of the church in the tomorrow that is here must
begin with what has historically been the heart of "Christen-
dom," the continent of Europe, and must pass on immediately
to the British Isles and to lands that have been settled from
Europe and Britain, namely, the Americas, Australia, and
New Zealand.
On the western portion of the continent of Europe the pic-
ure is one of (i) the waning of a region that for four and a half
:enturies dominated the globe, (2) an environment belligerently
or passively hostile to the church, and (3) embattled but vigor-
ous Christian minorities. Western Europe is the seat of the
largest of the Christian churches, that which looks to Rome for
direction. It is also the home of the Protestant Reformation.
Here has been most of the scholarship of the church. Here the
great theologies have been developed. Even today theological
movements on the continent of Europe profoundly affect the
rest of the world. From western Europe, through colonization,
2.O TOMORROW IS HERB
came most of the geographic spread of Christianity during the
sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, and from this
continent also, many of the Christian missions of the nineteenth
and twentieth centuries.
Western Europe, so important in the past four and a half
centuries, is now in rapid decline. Partial recovery may be
accomplished, but the decline is permanent. It is accompanied
by great agony of body and even greater agony of spirit. In
Germany hopelessness is dominant, and in former German-
occupied lands and even in countries that were neutral during
World War II, notably Sweden and Switzerland, although these
latter have been prosperous, much of nervous uncertainty is in
the air.
If one were to view only one side of the picture, Christianity
in western Europe would seem to be sharing in the slow death
of that region. The churches have been suffering from a drift
toward secularism that began before the two world wars. Al-
though in most of western Europe they were closely connected
with the state and membership in them was almost universal,
for the majority of the adherents the association was nominal.
Indifference and even antagonism were rife. To this long-term
condition there were added the distresses of World War II.
During the war, as before it, the Nazis placed restrictions on the
churches in areas under their control. In Germany some open
defections occurred, but these were only of minorities. The
overwhelming majority still maintain a formal church connec-
tion. In Germany and in parts of some other lands extensive
destruction was wrought on church buildings. Because of com-
pulsory service in the armies, many parishes were without
pastors and the numbers of those training for the ministry
THE CHURCH OP TOMORROW IS HERE ZI
dwindled, in some sections to the vanishing point. Because
of the dearth of paper and other factors, Christian litera-
ture was greatly reduced. Many church periodicals were
discontinued and a famine of Bibles developed and is still only
partially relieved. In Switzerland church attendance has fallen
off.
This is, fortunately, by no means the entire story. The church
in western Eu^op^.is morje vigorous than it was on the eve of
World War II. In numbers and physical resources it is weaker,
but in what matters most — its inner spiritual vitality — it is
stronger. In their resistance to the Nazis, the churches in Ger-
many and the German-occupied countries displayed unsus-
pected strength. More than any other group, whether political
parties, labor organizations, or universities, they maintained
centers of resistance to the Nazi flood. The story of the Con-
fessional Church in Germany is familiar to all.
In the Netherlands, the Reformed Church, in its resistance
to the Nazis, found itself and achieved church consciousness and
organization as it had not for many generations. The heroic
record of the leaders of the Church of Norway is a vivid recent
memory. In their opposition to the Nazis the churches there
won the respect of many who had heretofore disregarded or
even despised them. More significantly, many of their members
discovered unsuspected resources in their Christian faith and
lived more deeply into the meaning of the Gospel than ever.
As for the neutral countries of Switzerland and Sweden,
notable theological activity, associated for outsiders with the
names of Barth, Brunner, and Nygren, has been maintained.
In its relief activities the French Christian CIMADE has been a
memorable example of unselfish service in the face of great
ZZ TOMORROW IS HERE
handicaps. In some parts of Europe, thousands seeking security
and the meaning of life in the face of the ruin about them are
singularly open to the Gospel. In Germany, the Netherlands,
Finland, and Norway, in spite of the distresses of the times,
active interest in missions has been maintained. The giving of
money has continued, and in some countries, notably in Ger-
many, those wishing to devote their lives to missions outstrip the
facilities for training or sending them. On the eve of World
War II, German missionaries totaled more than 1,500. Germans
now in active missionary service have been reduced to about
400. Of these, many were in British, Dutch, or other enemy
territory and were either interned or repatriated. Yet hun-
dreds of German youths, undiscouraged, are offering them-
selves. From the suffering churches of western Europe fresh
streams of life may issue and contribute^ to the renewal of the
churches in more prosperous lands.
Central and Eastern Europe
Eastern Europe — especially Russia — is the stronghold of
communism, the center of communist power. It is also the
historic home of the family of Orthodox churches. The strongest
member of that family is in Russia.
Communism as an idealistic system for reorganizing society
has great appeal for many the world over. To those who have
lost belief in God it offers a faith and promises a society in which
class and racial discriminations, injustice, and poverty shall be
removed. By a strange accident of history, in the turmoil that
followed World War I communism obtained power in Russia.
There it fell heir to the traditidn of an absolute police state, that
of the czars, and has built up a regime that regiments the indi-
THE CHURCH OT TOMORROW IS HERE 2.3
vidual even more uncompromisingly than did that of the czars.
In Russia communism has combined with nationalism and with
an earlier tradition of autocratic ambition to build an expanding
empire more extensive than that which acknowledged the czars.
But more effectively than the czars, it is bringing all the Slavs
under its control and by propaganda is creating friendly enclaves
in other lands.
In Russia and Central Europe communism has, at least for
the moment, made its peace with the Orthodox Church, Com-
munism, it need hardly be said, is basically and officially anti-
Christian. The communist believes that religion is "the opiate
of the people." In its early years in Russia, the communist
regime mingled limited toleration with a kind of persecution,
on the theory that the church, deprived of the support of the
czarist state, would die out. Latterly, for a variety of reasons, it
has become more lenient. Christianity in Russia is far from dead.
The Russian Orthodox Church has been allowed more freedom.
Throngs attend its services. Evangelical groups are growing.
Thousands of Russians outside their native land are accessible
to the Gospel; some who have been reached are filtering back
into Russia, and are a possible means of strengthening Chris-
tianity there. In communist-dominated Bulgaria and Yugoslavia
the Orthodox Church has been disestablished. Thrown on its
own resources, it may gain in inward vigor. Yet the communist
peace with the church is little more than a truce. The funda-
mental, irreconcilable contradictions persist.
In Greece, in the hour of the nation's sorrow, the Orthodox
Church has shown fresh vigor. Movements of laity and clergy
s^ek to give better religious education to youth and to apply
the Christian faith to various aspects of life.
Z4 TOMORROW IS HERE
The British hies
How feres the church in the British Isles in the tomorrow
that is here? The question is fateful for Protestant Christianity.
In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries the English-speaking
peoples have been the main sources of the funds and personnel
for the Protestant missionary enterprise. Now that Europe is so
badly weakened, the weight of providing the physical means
for the world-wide church must increasingly fall on them.
Great Britain displays, although to a less extent, the same
general conditions that are to be found on the adjacent conti-
nent. She has suffered terribly from the drain of the two world
wars, and especially from World War IL While her churches
have given liberally to missions, they cannot provide the funds
to keep pace with the growing costs that accompany the rising
price level throughout the world. They must, moreover, rebuild
church structures that were destroyed during the war and erect
new ones to care for shifting populations. In the past twenty
years church membership and church attendance seem to have
fallen off. It is said that only from 10 to 15 per cent of the popu-
lation are closely linked with a church. Much of the population
of Britain, like that of Europe, is essentially pagan and is itself a
mission field. Only 10 per cent are said to be actually hostile, but
50 per cent are said to be indifferent. The leaders of the British
churches are fully aware of the problems that confront them. At
the core of the churches are profound conviction and sound life.
After the hiatus of the war years, candidates are again coming
forward for the ministry at home and for foreign missionary
service. Here and there are notable converts from among the
intelligentsia. As in the nineteenth century the defection of the
THE CHURCH OF TOMORROW IS HERE 2.$
intelligentsia preceded that of the masses, so now the conver-
sions among them may be the precursors of a swing to the
Christian faith among the rank and file of the population. In
Scotland the lona movement is a symbol of new life.
Canada, Australia^ and New Zealand
The three great dominions, members of the British Common-
wealth, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, are collectively
large in area but sparse in population. In them, notably in
Canada, vigor of church life is maintained, and the overwhelm-
ing majority of the population profess some church affiliation
or at least some church preference. The churches of Canada
especially are sharing substantially in the world-wide Christian
enterprise. Those of Australia and New Zealand, as is natural,
direct their missionary efforts mainly to the islands of the
South Pacific.
The United Stales
Because of the weakening of western Europe and Great
Britain and the small populations of Canada, Australia, and
New Zealand, an increasing share of the personnel and funds of
the Protestant missionary enterprise must come from the
United States.
In the United States a mounting proportion of the population
are members of churches. It is estimated that in 1850 only 15.5
per cent of the population were church members. In 1900, the
percentage had risen to 35.7, and in 1910, to 43.5. At present,
well over 50 per cent of the population have a church member-
ship. Protestants are gaining more rapidly than are Roman
Catholics. The Methodist Church reports that in 1946 it added
2.6 TOMORROW IS HERE
more than 1,000,000 members, and that of these at least 300,000
were on profession of faith, and hence fresh conversions. It seems
probable that as the percentage of the population who are
church members rises, the degree of religious literacy decreases
proportionately and the distinction between the church and the
world tends to be blurred. However, many evidences of vigorous
religious life are seen. As yet they affect only minorities, but
they are varied and are to be encountered in many sections of the
country and among widely different groups.
Part of the problem of the urgent tomorrow that is here
concerns the lifting of the horizons of the churches of the United
States beyond the borders of their own broad land, Christians
of the United States are giving millions for overseas relief and
for rebuilding the fabric of missions. Hundreds of their youth
are offering for service in the world mission. Yet hundreds of
millions of dollars are being allocated to new and enlarged
church buildings at home, and the majority of theological
students never give serious thought to the possibility of spend-
ing their lives outside the country. In spite of the enormous
responsibilities that the tomorrow that is here is forcing on the
United States, the Christians of the land are only beginning to
awake to the implications for themselves and their churches.
Latin America
The huge area that is designated Latin America presents a
wide variety of peoples and cultures. It has a Latin background.
Portuguese is the prevailing tongue in Brazil; Spanish elsewhere.
Yet in South America alone Latin America is divided into ten
countries, each with its distinctive problems and characteristics;
and Central America and the Caribbean contain as many more.
THE CHURCH OF TOMORROW IS HERE ZJ
In spite of a history longer than that of the United States, Latin
America has an air of youth. Violent ferment is working. The
new movements in Europe are having repercussions. The com-
motion of two world wars and the example of Russia have made
for stirrings in the laboring classes.
Conditions vary from country to country. In this report there
is room for only broad generalizations and a few specific in-
stances. Traditionally Latin America is Roman Catholic, but
for the majority of the people the connection with that church
is either very slight or nonexistent. The Roman Catholic Church
claims the region as its own and in most countries, in an effort
to make itself secure, enters actively into politics. Usually, too,
it is allied with landed and other vested interests that seek to
maintain themselves against the demands of the masses and find
support in the church. The Roman Catholic Church in Latin
America is woefully deficient in clergy, both in numbers and in
quality. To give even the minimum of pastoral oversight to its
flock it should have at least three times the number of priests
that now serve it, and the character of many of those it has
leaves a great deal to be desired. For these and other reasons the
church displays much of corruption, and thousands of the
masses and of the high-minded, intelligent folk will have noth-
ing to do with it. If these groups are to be reached by the Gospel,
it must be through Protestantism.
Protestantism, or, as it is preferably termed, Evangelical
Christianity, is represented in every country and is growing. Its
numerical strength varies from republic to republic. It is strong-
est in Brazil and next strongest in Mexico. Recently Mexico
has been the scene of persecution of Evangelicals that has been
fomented by the Roman Catholic clergy. Through much of
3O TOMORROW IS HERE
northern peninsula of that island, Minahassa. Other groups of
Christians had risen through the work of missionary societies,
mostly Dutch and German. Notable among these was the church
among the Bataks of Sumatra, the outgrowth of German mis-
sionary effort. From 1925 on, the Batak Church had been
largely independent of control by missionaries. Indonesia also
had many Roman Catholics, but they were only about a fourth
as numerous as Protestants. Before the war a nationalistic
movement had been in progress, but it was limited largely to
non-Christians. Christians were not politically minded and were
often regarded by their non-Christian neighbors as auxiliaries
of Dutch imperialism.
World War II brought striking changes. First came the Ger-
man occupation of the Netherlands (1940) and the cutting off
of the missionaries from their home constituencies. Aid came to
the missionaries, partly from local sources and partly through
the intervention of the International Missionary Council,
Then followed the sudden Japanese irruption. Japanese propa-
ganda helped to promote nationalism and a desire to be free
from the Netherlands. True, the Japanese did not grant religious
liberty, but by interning the missionaries, they threw the In-
donesian Christians on their own resources. Many Christian
leaders perished. The Japanese power collapsed as abruptly as it
had come.
After its demise, movements arose that issued in the forma-
tion of the Indonesian Republic. In Java, the revolt, in its initial
stages, contained fanatically Moslem elements and .was in part
anti-Christian. Since Java has only a few Christians, martyrdoms
were few. Through much of Indonesia Christians have become
politically conscious and stand for independence. Christians are
THE CHURCH OF TOMORROW IS HERE 31
proportionately more prominent than their numbers would
warrant. For instance, the Prime Minister of the Indonesian
Republic is a Christian, as was the CommandeHn-Chief of the
Republican armies. The churches, already thrown on their own
resources by the internment of missionaries, have assumed
responsibility for self-support and self-direction. Church life is
stronger than it was before the war. There are movements to
bring the Christians of the widely flung islands into self-conscious
fellowship. The Batak Church, now wholly independent, has
projects for missions to Moslems. As in so much of the world,
there is a dearth of trained leadership. However, steps are being
taken to remedy this lack by creating or strengthening training
schools. The missionary agencies in the Netherlands favor Indo-
nesian autonomy, both political and ecclesiastical, and, in turn,
Indonesian Christians have made it clear that they are eager for
missionaries, provided only that they will come prepared to
accept the new conditions. Two-thirds of the missionary staff
was lost because of the war, but Holland has a large supply of
candidates. The atmosphere in the Indonesian churches is one of
hope. Numerical gains continue to be made. Some of these,
interestingly enough, are in the island of Bali, which is pre-
dominantly Hindu in religion and which under the Dutch
regime was almost closed to missions. The Batak Church has
increased by 50,000 since the outbreak of World War II.
Malaya
The Malay Peninsula, closely related in Ian guage and race to
much of Indonesia, has been largely under B ritish rule. On the
eve of the Japanese occupation the main elements of the popu-
lation were Malays, Moslem by religion; Chinese, about equal
JX TOMORROW IS HERE
to the Malays in number; and Indians, a smaller group. Almost
no missions were conducted among the Malays. The only
Moslems who came in contact with Christianity did so through
mission schools, and most of the Moslems in these schools were
Indians. The Christians were among the Chinese and Indians.
During World War II and the Japanese occupation the church
suffered but came through triumphantly, with an increase in self-
support. One hundred and fifty lepers were baptized. The
greater degree of autonomy granted by the British in the postwar
period will make missions among the Moslem Malays even more
difficult than before, but among the other elements in the
population the church will persist and grow.
The Philippines
The Philippines suffered as severely from World War II as
did any land. Destruction of property and life was appalling.
The deterioration of morals was marked. Children saw their
elders committing acts of dishonesty and violence that in normal
times would have been condemned, and they therefore grew up
with a weakened sense of right and wrong.
Then came political independence and the necessary adjust-
ments to that new status. It is said that 80 per cent of the church
buildings were destroyed. There was a dearth of Christiaa
literature, and four years elapsed without the distribution of
Bibles. Copies of the Bible became rare. Yet the Evangelical
churches went on. Church services were maintained, with the
use of passages that the Christians had memorized. Hundreds
were baptized. One reporter at Whitby declared that a religious
revival is in progress in the Philippines that is greater than any-
thing that has ever been known there. Churches are being rebuilt
THE CHURCH OP TOMORROW IS HERE 33
and schools reopened. A wider unity among the Evangelical
forces is being achieved. Converts continue to be won from the
nominal Roman Catholics who constitute the large majority of
the population. The Evangelical movement, not yet a half-
century old, is flourishing. It needs to replenish its leaders, for
many were killed or died of disease. Its three theological semi-
naries must be strengthened. Yet the outlook is promising.
Japan
The general situation that the church confronts in Japan is
one of tragic abnormality. In most of the large cities the destruc-
tion by war bombings was prodigious. The Japanese are suffering
from shock and extreme war fatigue. From at least September,
1931, they had been the victims of a war psychology, and in-
creasingly after July, 1937, they were under the pressure of
large-scale war, with war propaganda, growing privation, and
loss of life. Then, in August, 1945, came the collapse, for which
they were unprepared, and the utterly unprecedented experi-
ence of having their land occupied by foreign troops and directed
by foreign rulers. They are suffering from undernourishment,
inflation, deprivation of foreign markets, the prostration of in-
dustry, and the uncertainty of reparations and of the eventual
terms of the treaties that will emerge from the peace. While they
are permitted to have their own government, they know that
the ultimate decisions must depend not on it but on the con-
queror. Yet, by a kind of anomaly, the Japanese have a sense of
liberation. They are freed from the dream and the burden of
empire and from the kind of regimentation imposed by the state
during the war. There are few suicides and there is some measure
of humility, and also much vitality and dignity. Religiously, a
34 TOMORROW IS HERE
partial vacuum has been created. Shinto has been disestablished
and its state shrines dismantled. It is said that only 10 per cent
of the people now go to such shrines as remain. There are
bewilderment, apathy, and a loss of sense of direction.
In many respects the church in Japan has suffered . During
the war, in the main, it supported the nation. Consequently its
message and witness were warped. Relations with the world
Christian fellowship were suspended. At least half of the physical
plants of the churches and Christian schools are gone. Pastors
are either without salaries or with pitifully small ones. Laymen
are out of work and can contribute little to the support of the
churches.
Yet in some respects the church in Japan is stronger than ever
before. It belongs to Japan to a degree that it never belonged
in earlier times. Always it had appeared alien. By sharing in the
sufferings of the nation during the war, the Christians won
acceptance by their fellow Japanese. Katayama, the premier of
Japan, is an earnest Christian, an elder in a church. Kagawa,
although a third lighter in weight than before the war, nearly
blind, and with only one lung, is continuing his evangelism on an
enlarged scale. He declares that he gets what he has from God —
and that it is not so much strength as fire. I
The church in Japan is facing many urgent tasks. It must
rebuild its church fabric, regather its members, and restudy
and replan its program. Its leadership is aging and it must recruit
and train successors. Although it numbers less than one-half of
i per cent of the population,. it must seek to apply the Evangel
to all society, and must reach both the cities, with their laboring
and commercial classes, and the rural districts. It must further
develop the Church of Christ in Japan, the inclusive body that
THE CHURCH OF TOMORROW IS HERE 35
was formed a few months before Pearl Harbor and that em-
braces nine-tenths of the Protestant Christians of the land. It
must renew its, con tacts with the international Christian fellow-
ship. Hundreds of missionaries from abroad are needed, and
needed as soon as they can be sent.
Korea
For forty years Korea was controlled by Japan and under the
scrutiny of the Japanese police. During the latter part of that
period she was even more strictly regimented, and endured fully
as great hardships as the Japanese, except that her cities were
not bombed. Now, after the Japanese defeat, divided between
the Russians and the Americans, with the prospect of a united
independent government indefinitely remote, Korea deserves
the sympathy of the world.
The Protestant churches, strong and vigorously evangelistic
on the eve of the 1930*5, have gone through a decade or more
of severe hardship and have emerged loyal to their faith and, al-
though less than i per cent of the population, are reaching out
actively to proclaim the Gospel to non-Christians. For several
years the Japanese attempted to coerce the Christians to partic-
ipate in ceremonies at the Shinto shrines. Many Christians
complied. Scores went to prison rather than conform. At least
fifty-six died there. Many pastors were forced into war work,
and Sunday services were curtailed. In 1946, missionaries began
to return, but they could come only to the American zone. In
the Russian zone, where the church is stronger than in the
south, the communist authorities have dissolved the Christian
youth organizations. They have also arrested some of the
pastors. However, church life continues. In Pyengyang, the
3 6 TOMORROW IS HERE
leading city of the north, fifty churches are going on, the
theological seminary has an enrollment of over 250, street
evangelistic preaching continues and is attended by throngs,
and continuous prayer is being offered in the churches for the
relaxation of the communist opposition. In the south, in the
American zone, Christian hospitals and schools are being re-
constituted. Church services are crowded, in part by Christian
refugees from the north.
The urgent needs of the church in Korea are the rehabilitation
of the ministry, the increase of the missionary staff, paper for
Bibles and other Christian literature, and scholarships for the
training of Christian leaders.
China
China is passing through the greatest series of crises in her long
history. She has suffered unimaginably. Probably the mass of
agony is greater than that of any other people, even the Rus-
sians. Years of devastating invasion, a strangling blockade, and
now disheartening civil war, all on top of a revolution that for
half a century has been sweeping across every phase of China's
life — these have taken a fearful toll. It is estimated that China
has eighty million homeless and ten million orphans. Fantastic
inflation is ever mounting and bringing untold hardship. Moral
disintegration is rife. Communism is seeking to enter the
vacuum left by'the decay of the old culture.
Through these years of agony the church has made progress.
To be sure, the majority of missionaries had to leave or were
interned; much church property was destroyed; in some places
church life was disrupted; and thousands of Chinese Christians
joined the exodus from the regions occupied by the Japanese to
THE CHURCH OF TOMORROW IS HERE 37
the west. Under the strain of the war years many of the clergy
died. One-half of those who remain are over fifty years of age.
New clergy are not being adequately recruited. Christian
workers are overweary from the long strain. In communist
territory church life is difficult. Leading communists declare
that Christianity and communism are incompatible. Yet, while
accurate statistics are lacking, the church in China has grown
in numbers. The Christians who moved west brought new vigor
and breadth of outlook to the churches in that inland area,
heretofore remote from the main currents of the world church.
In some of the Japanese-occupied cities gains in church member-
ship made good the losses from the westward migration. The
fact that Christians shared the distresses of their fellow Chinese
and that the churches were centers of relief and hope has given
Christianity better standing than it has ever enjoyed. The
doors in noncommunist China are open to the Gospel as they
have never been. Christians are influential far beyond the i per
cent that their numerical proportion in the population would
indicate. The National Christian Council has projected a three-
year Forward .Evangelistic Movement. As a feature of that
campaign it has as an ideal: every Christian a praying Christian,
every Christian a serving Christian, every Christian a witnessing
Christian.
Needs are imperative for reaching entire families and Chris-
tianizing family life; far too many of the Christians are indi-
viduals who have not brought their families with them into the '
church. Rising costs present grave difficulties to various branches
of the church's work, including that of the Christian schools*
colleges, and universities. The missionary body, badly depleted
during the war, must be enlarged as quickly as possible. More
3 8 TOMORROW IS HERE
attention should be given to the rural areas, for there dwell at
least 80 per cent of the population. As in so many other lands,
the recruiting and training of clergy and other Christian workers
are clamant needs. All of these problems must be met and solved
in the face of as urgent an opportunity as the church has ever
known.
Siam
Christians have never been numerous in Siam, for the country
is predominantly Buddhist. During the war Christians suffered
from petty persecution, and they were threatened with loss of
positions in the government or in business if they did not become
Buddhists. However, today missionaries are returning, the
church is popular, and Christian schools are crowded.
Burma
Christians are more numerous in Burma than in Siam.
However, they are predominantly from the non-Burmese ani-
mistic minorities, notably the Karens. The Burmese proper are
loyally Buddhist and there are only slightly more than five
thousand Christians among them.
The war brought great suffering. In some ways the church
lost heavily. Spiritually, however, it is today stronger than
before the war. During the war Burmese, both Buddhists and
Christians, were thrown together intimately in their affliction,
and greater appreciation of the Christians followed.
The independence movement that has loomed prominently
since the war has absorbed much of the attention of Christians
as well as non-Christians. Karen Christians are divided on the
issue. In general the older ones distrust independence and the
THE CHURCH OP TOMORROW IS HERE 39
younger ones favor it. Its seems probable that the government
of independent Burma will grant religious liberty, not so much
from principle as for the purpose of insuring national unity.
Ceylon
In Ceylon, Buddhists are in the large majority and tend to
dominate the government as it achieves greater autonomy
within the British Commonwealth. Hindus and Moslems con-
stitute large minorities. Christians constitute about 10 per cent
of the population, a larger proportion than in any country in
South Asia or the Far East except the Philippines. Of the
Christians the large majority are Roman Catholics, a com-
munity whose strength stems from the period of Portuguese
occupation in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
Buddhism is having a revival in Ceylon. This is chiefly on
nationalist grounds, for loyalty to the country is held to involve
adherence to Buddhism as the national faith. Buddhist na-
tionalism is in part, therefore, anti-Christian, and in one way
or another, in part through restrictions on the amount of radio
time allowed Christian organizations, in part through dis-
couraging attendance at churches, and in part through impedi-
ments to Christian schools, Christianity is being opposed.
Opposition is forcing the Protestant forces to come together,
and a comprehensive church union is being proposed that will
include practically all evangelicals.
India
The church in India has felt the effects of World War IL
Although almost no fighting was seen on the soil of India, the
country suffered from shortages and rising prices, and Christians
40 TOMORROW IS HERE
and their pastors have shared in the common privations. Thou-
sands of soldiers from other lands were in India. Among these
were many Christians who broadened the horizons of the
Indian Christians and encouraged them to consider themselves
more a part of the world church.
More revolutionary have been the political developments.
In August, 1947, two new dominions of the British Common-
wealth came into being, Pakistan and India. The ties that
bound the native states to Britain as the paramount power
were dissolved, and the states had the option of being in-
dependent or of joining one or the other of the dominions.
In general Indian Christians have welcomed the new stage in
their country's history. They feel that the grounds for the
accusation that they are under foreign protection and therefore
alien will be removed, and that they will be accepted as au-
thentically Indian. In Pakistan religious liberty may be a prob-
lem, for by tradition Moslem states do not permit converts to
be won from Islam. The fact that the other dominion is known
as India and not Hindustan seems encouraging, for it is an
indication that Hinduism will not be regarded by the state as
the one religion of the land. Moreover, in the new constitution
for India the prospects seem favorable for citizens who wish to
change their faith. Thus the continuation of Christian evange-
lism may be possible. Eventually the Dominion of India will
take over the social services, such as medicine and education,
in which missions have shared, but for the time being its re-
sources will prove inadequate for the full maintenance of these
services, and need and opportunity will exist for Christian
participation. Several of the native states have taken measures
that will make Christian evangelism difficult.
THE CHURCH OF TOMORROW IS HERE 41
The outlook for Christianity in India is encouraging. There
are already 8 million Christians in the country, or approximately
2 per cent of the population. About half of these Christians are
Protestants. Although this Christian population is greater than
that of any other land in Asia, there are serious problems. There
are, for example, only 3,700 ordained men for 10,000 organized
churches and 10,000 unorganized congregations. Yet a spiritual
awakening is reported in the churches, especially in rural areas,
and much sacrificial giving is in evidence. One Indian leader
declared at Whitby that 2,000 additional missionaries are
urgently needed to enter the open doors.
The Near East
The Near East presents a varied picture, but in the main
only slight progress is being made by the church. Here is the
historic center of Islam. Here are the encysted remnants of
ancient churches long on the defensive and not reaching out in
evangelism among Moslems. Here Islam is the prevailing reli-
gion. In Iran, where on nationalistic and not religious grounds
mission schools have been closed, a number of Moslems are
being won to the Christian faith. In Turkey, a purely secular
government places strict regulations on religion. Mission schools
can be maintained, but the law forbids religious conversations
with students, and any Christian impact must be through the
character of the teacher. Yet opportunity is increasing for the
distribution of the Bible and other Christian literature. In
Syria, although the official religion is Islam, Christians are
prominent. In Lebanon, Christians are in the majority, and
nationalism is making for cooperation between them and
Moslems. In Egypt, nationalism stresses unity and for that
42. TOMORROW IS HERE
reason emphasizes Islam, the religion of the majority. Fairly
steady losses to Islam from the Coptic Church, the largest of
the Christian bodies, are being seen. Increasingly, discrimination
is being practised against Christians in the awarding of employ-
ment with the government. The many branches of the Christian
church — Coptics, Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Protes-
tant — are coming together in a common effort for religious
liberty. In the vast peninsula of Arabia only a little missionary
effort is possible. Yet, in spite of discouragements, in most of the
Near East Protestant missions go on and have a decided al-
though unspectacular influence.
Africa South of the Sahara
Some of the most striking gains of the church in the past
hundred years have been in Africa south of the Sahara. Here
the numerical growth has been phenomenal and the contribu-
tions of the Gospel in spiritual and moral transformation have
been outstanding. Missions, too, have borne the brunt of
reducing languages to writing, of educating the people accord-
ing to modern methods, and of producing such literature as
exists. They have shared with colonial governments in medical
care and have been a potent factor in assisting the African to
meet constructively the transition forced on him by the coming1
of the white man and Western civilization.
In the tomorrow that is here vast changes are in progress.
Africa is being hurried into the new age. The pace is quickening.
World War II brought Africa into closer contact with the
outer world than ever before. Thousands of white troops were
in Africa, and thousands of black troops were in Europe and
Asia. Moreover, even apart from the war, Africa's products are
THE CHURCH OP TOMORROW IS HERE 43
in demand in the markets of the world, and the white man is
developing mines and other enterprises to obtain them. The
tribal organization continues to disintegrate. The economic and
social demands of Africans are increasing. Africans are insisting
on more of the physical goods of life. Racial tensions are mount-
ing, and not alone in South 'Africa. More Africans are being
educated in the modern manner and are not content with being
subordinate to the whites. The prestige of the white man and
trust in him are waning.
To the church and its missionaries this new day brings
challenges, The spread of the Gospel and self-support in the
churches are making enormous strides. But can the church
adequately reach the tens of thousands of laborers who have
been brought in to work the white man's mines? Can it make
an adequate appeal to the new and growing educated groups?
Can rural life, the life of the overwhelming majority, be
permeated with the Gospel? The resources of the soil are being
wasted through lack of proper agricultural methods. What can
the church do about it? Can the church keep pace with the
need and the demand for wholesome literature? The education
of women and girls is falling behind that of men and boys. This
brings problems for the Christian family. Is the church develop-
ing a ministry that can give adequate leadership to the new
intelligentsia? What can the church do to ease the race tensions?
The situation is urgent and will brook no delay.
By Way of Summary
In the maze of details that have been summarized in the
preceding paragraphs in what may seem a bewildering fashion,
certain general trends stand out. First, as was said at the outset
44 TOMORROW IS HERE
of this chapter, the church is very much alive. Second, in the
midst of a hostile world, Christians are a minority. This is no
novel experience. From the outset, the world has been hostile
to the Gospel, and Christians have been pilgrims and strangers.
At times Christians have seemed to forget this. In the western
Europe that is now disappearing and even in the United States,
church membership has been so much an accepted propriety
that the distinction has been blurred and even at times erased.
The Occident was being inocculated with a mild form of
Christianity in such fashion that it was in danger of becoming
immune to the genuine Gospel and its sweeping demands.
Now, in Europe, the contrast has again become sharply defined,
and loyal minorities are discovering the wealth as well as the
uncompromising character of the Gospel. With the aid of
missions during the past hundred and fifty years Christian
minorities have arisen in practically all lands where they had
previously not existed. Some of the minorities are feeble, but
in each of them is a nucleus of vigorous life. Third, these
minorities are being bound together in a conscious world-wide
fellowship. This is the Ecumenical Movement of which we
are now, fortunately, hearing so much. Here is a fellowship
that was strengthened rather than weakened in the tragic years
of World War II. It is growing. In it the church of tomorrow is
foreshadowed; to the discerning, it is already here. It was vividly
seen at Whitby. In the same month it was finding expression in
the World Conference of Christian Youth at Oslo. It is also
being seen in the World Council of Churches, still officially in
process of formation, but very much alive and expanding. It is
being witnessed in other organizations such as the World's
Student Christian Federation, the World Council of Christian
THE CHURCH OF TOMORROW IS HERE 45
Education, formerly known as the World's Sunday School
Association, the world organizations of the Young Men's and
Young Women's Christian Associations, and in many a local
and national body that in one way or another is an expression of
the rising urge for Christian unity. In an age of world turmoil,
Christianity is ceasing to be Occidental and is becoming in
fact what it has long been in principle, world wide. In spite of
their many divisions, Christians are drawing together, and on
a global scale.
All that we have attempted to say in this chapter was concrete
and vibrant at Whitby. It is to a description of the Whitby
gathering that we must now turn.
Chapter Three
THE REALITY OF THE FELLOWSHIP
ON THAT FIRST SUNDAY MORNING AT WHITBY THEY WENT
to the altar in groups of eight — Christians, mission-
ary folk all* Had a commentator been present, he
would with solemn effectiveness have called the roll of the na-
tions and races as each person in that small company of about
one hundred and twenty moved forward to participate in the
Lord's Supper. The delegates were drawn from around the globe
and represented every color of the human race. They had come
together from a world of chaos and strife, suffering and despair.
In such a setting it was only a matter of moments before
everyone in that plain, sunlit school assembly room, which now
served as a sanctuary for worship, felt himself part of a living
bond of kinship in Christ. Each knew, as surely as it is given
human beings to know, that he was one with every other person
present. That group represented the whole community of man-
kind, and those who experienced their oneness in Christ and
the power known in the presence of the spirit of God can
never forget the high and holy joy of that hour. The experience
was the reality in each life of the fellowship that is given to
those who confess Jesus Christ as Lord.
How perfectly the four celebrants of the Holy Communion
symbolized the world outreach of the church! All were Angli-
cans, for this first of several observances of the Lord's Supper
THE REALITY OF THE FELLOWSHIP 47
was celebrated according to the Anglican rite. Archbishop
Mowll of Sydney, Australia, a man who had spent many years
of his life in China, had as a fellow-celebrant a Chinese friend,
Bishop Robin Chen. And officiating with these two were the
Reverend R.O.C. King, a West Indian Negro, and the Rev-
erend Mahmood Rezavi, a first-generation Christian, a Persian
convert from Islam. What rich meaning was conveyed in the
opening words of the communion prayer: "O God, who hast
made of one blood all nations of men . . ."! Here before the
eyes of all participants was a symbol of the reality of their
fellowship.
And to what a representative group from the,, world church
did these four minister! Bishops and laymen knelt together at
the altar to partake of the bread and the wine. John Subhan had
come from India. As is true of so many others present, an
intensely gripping book could be written of his life. There is
space here to record only the bare facts that he was converted
from Islam and that he is now a bishop of the Methodist Church.
Kneeling with the Indian bishop were the Lutheran Bishop Axel
Malmstrom and his wife from Denmark. Mr. Alberto Rembao,
the Mexican editor of La Nueva Democrada; Mrs. Pao-Chun
Nyi, a doctor from Shanghai; and U Ba Hlaing, a lawyer,
and now president and chief executive officer of Mandalay
Municipality, Burma, were fellow-participants in that com-
munion service. University professors John Baillie of Edinburgh
and Knut Westman of Uppsala knelt with the Reverend
Christian Baeta from the Gold Coast of Africa and the Rev-
erend Setareki Tuilovoni from the Fiji Isknds, striking in
appearance because of his great shock of bushy black hair.
Count Steven van Randwijck of Holland and the Reverend
48 TOMORROW IS HERE
Toenggoel Sihombing and the Reverend Wilhelm Johannis
Rumambi of Indonesia communed together, is did the Rev-
erend Emile Schloesing of France and Professor Carl Ihmels
from the Russian-occupied zone of Germany. One could think
only of Paul's lofty description, "Here there cannot be Greek
nor Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian,
slave, free man, but Christ is all, and in all." The reality of that
living unity in Christ stirred every heart to its depths. It was
more real than the physical surroundings.
Those who communed here recognized this as one of the high
moments of their lives. They knew that the Holy Spirit had
been among them. The thoughts of many were directed to the
occasion of Pentecost and the first great outpouring of the
Spirit. (That thought recurred many times in the days that
were to come.) There had been in that earlier day one hundred
and twenty together "with one accord in one place." It was
those original disciples who had launched the world mission of
the church, and here in like manner were their heirs, assembled
to seek the guidance of the Holy Spirit for the further pur-
suance of the world mission of the church — the church whose
genius since its inception has been that it is missionary. The
same number, the same unity, the same felt presence of the
Spirit, and the same task before them! Had the all-embracing
reality of the oneness with Christians of every age and every
land ever been experienced more deeply?
But what of the larger gathering of which this service of Holy
Communion was a part? It assembled at Whit by, Ontario, in
Canada, from July 5 to July 24, 1947. Popularly designated
"The Whitby Conference," it was ar; Enlarged Meeting of the
Committee of the International Missionary Council. Such
THE REALITY OF THE FELLOWSHIP 49
nomenclature conveys little meaning, however, unless one
understands the council's nature and genesis. For what purpose
had it brought together these people from around the world?
What kind of people were they? And more important, does
what they did have any significance for the man in the pew in
Manchester, Bombay, Los Angeles, or Nanking?
The International Missionary Council
In a very real sense the International Missionary Council is
one of the products of the Evangelical Awakening of the late
eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Modern Protestant
missions are usually considered to have begun with William
Carey's going to India, in 1793. Within a short time numerous
missionary societies were formed in England, on the continent,
and in the United States for the fulfillment of the Great Com-
mission of Jesus Christ. It is only natural, then, that as these
missionary societies pursued their similar tasks they should
come together in interdenominational conferences to consult
with one another and to inform the members of the churches of
their work and of their needs.
The first of these interdenominational missionary conferences
was convened for two days in New York in 1854. The occasion
was the arrival in America of Dr. Alexander Duff, a missionary
to India. Another similar conference assembled for four days in
Liverpool in 1860. Eighteen years later, in London, nearly 160
persons met together for five days to evaluate the effectiveness
of their societies' missionary endeavors. And in 1888 a large
world-wide missionary conference was held in London. Of its
nearly 1,500 members, 1,341 were British. Largely as a result of
this great London gathering, there met in New York for ten
5<3 TOMORROW IS HERB
days in 1900 the Ecumenical Conference — "Ecumenical"
because the conference represented missionary work in every
part of the world, not because it represented all branches of
the Christian church. Of the 1,500 present, some 600 were
foreign missionaries. At the time no provision was made for a
succeeding conference, but another was held ten years later,
and it proved to be epoch making.
Edinburgh, 1910
The World Missionary Conference of 1910, which met at
Edinburgh, stands in the direct succession of the conferences
already described, but it marks the real watershed between the
loosely related attempts at missionary cooperation that came
before it and the more effective organizations that have since
developed for cooperative endeavor in the Christian world
mission. Both the International Missionary Council and the
World Council of Churches l stem directly from Edinburgh,
and 1910 is therefore frequently referred to as the beginning of
the modern Ecumenical Movement. The word "ecumenical,"
which is gaining wider currency in the churches today, means
"as broad as the inhabited world." It refers to world Christianity
— Christianity that is world wide and united. The Ecumeni-
cal Movement is a trend toward the development of a conscious-
ness in all the churches of the church universal conceived as a
world missionary community. Its primary concern is making
the Gospel effective the world around, and to this purpose
organization is subsidiary.
1 The World Council of Churches is still technically "in process of formation,*'
although it has been functioning effectively since 1938, Delayed in its official
formation by the war, the World Council of Churches will be actually constituted
by its first Assembly at Amsterdam in late August, 1948.
THE REALITY OP THE FELLOWSHIP 51
Several distinguishing features characterized the World Mis-
sionary Conference of 1910. It was the first of the interdenom-
inational missionary conferences the membership of which
(1,355) was comprised of delegates appointed officially by
missionary societies whose allotments were determined in pro-
portion to their expenditures on the field. It was thus truly
representative. Furthermore, it was in the fullest sense a con-
ference. Previous missionary gatherings had been built around
platform addresses, but as a result of a preliminary two-year
study program there was real give and take at Edinburgh, and
the conference produced much helpful consultation. Finally,
it created a Continuation Committee through which the work
of the conference was to be continued and through which the
conference would be perpetuated.
The International Missionary CoundVs Formation, 7927
The Continuation Committee was brought into being on the
threshold of World War I, with Dr. John R. Mott as its chair-
man. Before the outbreak of hostilities in Europe, Dr. Mott
traveled around the world to organize bodies that later became
national Christian councils. Each national council facilitated
cooperative, united endeavor among the churches. However,
when the war began, resultant animosities threatened to disrupt
the Continuation Committee, but this catastrophe was averted
by the establishment of an Emergency Committee in 1918.
The new body served especially to safeguard the freedom of
French and German missions and was largely instrumental in
making possible an important meeting at Crans, Switzerland,
in 1920.
At Crans the atmosphere was tense as a result of the strain of
JX TOMORROW IS HERE
misunderstanding arising from the war, but plans emerged for
the creation of the International Missionary Council. This
organization was constituted one year later, in 1922, at Lake
Mohonk, New York, as an international council linking to-
gether in one body the national Christian councils and the
national missionary conferences of the world in the common
task of world evangelization. Thus the International Missionary
Council came into being, not as a legislative body, but as an
advisory council for its constituent members.
It is obvious, then, that an individual denominational mis-
sionary society does not have membership directly in the Inter-
national Missionary Council. It is represented in that council
through its membership in a national organization such as the
Foreign Missions Conference of North America (United States
and Canada), the National Christian Council of China, or the
Conference of Missionary Societies in Great Britain and Ire-
land. Twenty-six of these national bodies (although some few
include more than one nation) comprise the membership of the
International Missionary Council.
The Jerusalem Conference^ 1928
The first world assembly of the .International Missionary
Council met in Jerusalem at Easter time, 1928. In some respects
the Jerusalem Conference differed markedly from the Edin-
burgh meeting in 1910. It was a smaller gathering. Delegates
numbered only 250. But another contrast was of far greater
importance. At Edinburgh i per cent of the delegates were na-
tionals from the lands of the younger churches, and they came,
aot as representatives of their churches, but as part of the quota
>£ the parent missionary societies of the older churches. At
THE REALITY OF THE FELLOWSHIP 53
Jerusalem roughly one-fourth of the delegates were nationals
from the lands of the younger churches, and they came repre-
senting their own national Christian councils. Many of the
younger churches were seen to be churches in their own right
and with capable leadership. Some were self-supporting and
carried on their own missionary work. This shift in qualified
representation was, and increasingly is, one of the most im-
portant factors to reckon with in world Christianity. Further-
more, for the first time Latin America was represented. And
appropriately, too, the Orthodox churches were present. From
the conference two new organizational arms for the Inter-
national Missionary Council emerged: the Department of Social
and Economic Research and Counsel, and the Committee on
the Christian Approach to the Jews. Both continue today as
part of the council.
The Madras Conference, 1938
Considerable progress had been made in the work of the
International Missionary Council when it held its next world
meeting at Madras, India, at Christmas time, 1938, on the very
eve of World War II. Indeed, Hangchow, the site originally
chosen for the meeting, had to be abandoned because of the
"undeclared" war between Japan and China that had broken
out in July, 1937. The final decision whether or not to proceed
with the Madras meeting had to be made only a few days after
Munich. The period was an extremely trying and ominous one
in which to bring together a world conference. But of what
portent for the future that, when the nations of the world were
pulling apart and preparing for the worst holocaust mankind
has known, the most widely representative meeting ever as-
54 TOMORROW IS HERE
scmbled under any auspices met at Madras to outline the
program of the Christian world mission in the next terrible
years ahead! Four hundred and seventy people, of whom more
than half now represented the younger churches, came together
at Madras. There they laid such a solid foundation and so closely
cemented the ties of the Christian world community that after
World War II, the solidarity of that community was preserved
intact, as it had not been in the strained period following World
War L Indeed, it was strengthened by the testing of war. This
point was made graphic at Whitby.
World War II and Orphaned Missions
During the war the International Missionary Council had
many heavy responsibilities. However, its best known and
most unusual undertaking was what has come to be known as
"Orphaned Missions." The outbreak of the war obviously
severed German missions from their base at home. Shortly, too,
French, Danish, Norwegian, Finnish, and Dutch missions were
similarly "orphaned." Prompt action averted what otherwise
would have been a tragedy. A new and thrilling chapter was
written in the history of the church. From China, from Mexico
and Argentina, from the Congo, from the Straits Settlements,
from Syria, from Great Britain and the United States — yes,
even from Japan — money was contributed by many denomina-
tions for the support of missions that had been cut off from their
home source of income. Since November, 1939, well over five
and a half million dollars have been contributed to the Orphaned
Missions Fund. And so far as is known, as a result of the Fund
not a single Protestant missionary anywhere in the world has
had to leave his post during the war years because of kck of
THE REALITY OF THE FELLOWSHIP 55
funds. This amazing story can be recorded only because a world
Christian community does exist, and because that community
has world-wide organizations such as the International Mis-
sionary Council as its functioning arms. The community is a
fellowship that knows no barriers of race and nation.
In February, 1946, the Ad Interim Committee of the Inter-
national Missionary Council assembled in Geneva for its first
official meeting after the war. Direct contact with many in
Europe and elsewhere, impossible during the war, was renewed,
and the immediate next steps necessary for further work were
taken. In a few weeks it became apparent that while an early
representative world meeting would have to be small, it was of
the utmost importance. The effects of the war on the world
missionary enterprise needed to be assayed and a strategy had
to be determined. The spiritual tie of the world fellowship had
remained unbroken, but after the years of war an opportunity
for Christian missionary leaders to renew their friendships in
face-to-face meeting was imperative. Thus was conceived the
Whitby Conference of the International Missionary Council.
The Whitby Conference, 7947
When the Whitby delegates assembled, they had before them
i threefold purpose: first, to determine how the war had affected
the work of the church throughout the world and to measure
effectively the gains and losses; second, to "rediscover" the
meaning of the old yet ever new Christian Gospel for a devas-
tated, utterly confused, and despairing world; third, in com-
plete dependence on the spirit of God, to seek a plan of action
for united effort in the common Divine Commission of the older
md younger churches — the winning of mankind to Christ.
56 TOMORROW IS HEBJS
The keynote set for Whitby's sessions was evangelism as the
one great task of the church in the world today.
Whitby9 s Setting
Like a sheltered island in a peaceful cove while a storm rages
on the sea — this was the quiet little town of Whitby in the
summer of 1947. Lying east of Toronto on the shore of Lake
Ontario, it seemed remote from all the swirling currents of a
world in turmoil. During the three-week course of the Whitby
meeting, the Paris Conference on European Economic Co-
operation was in session. The New York Times on July 20
reported that the close of the Paris sessions made final the
economic break between Russia and the West. At the same
time tension was mounting in Palestine, with an increasing
number of sporadic outbursts of violence. The Dutch began
what amounted to a colonial war in Indonesia. China was letting
her blood in a ruinous civil war. India was seething, with
internecine conflict a grim prospect. Virtually the whole world
was in agony. But life in Whitby continued as it had in the past.
The town's substantial homes and well kept lawns betokened
prosperity and a way of living difficult to discover elsewhere in
the world. On the edge of the village unpaved streets overhung
with leafy maples gradually merged into fields of newly mown
hay and ripening grain. For those who had to return to Holland,
to Germany, to Palestine, to India, to China, and to Indonesia,
Whitby was a momentary haven in the midst of tragedy and
terror — symptoms of revolution already in progress.
The Canadian Overseas Missions Council was the generous
host of this meeting of the International Missionary Council.
The conference itself met at and enjoyed the gracious hospi-
THE REALITY OF THE FELLOWSHIP 57
tality of the Ontario Ladies' College, which looks mote like a
country estate than a campus. It was, indeed, originally an
estate. The one large building of the college, where delegates
met and were housed, had been constructed in the mid-nine-
teenth century. The builder of the Victorian gothic structure
had aspired to entertain royalty. He had prepared, without
knowing it, a perfect meeting place for this twentieth-century
conference.
The campus-estate was ringed with trees that set it apart. Its
long, gently sloping lawns held great appeal for old friends who
wished to stroll. In the afternoons and evenings little groups
assembled under the shade trees to converse and enjoy the
gardens or the colorful bed of geraniums and cannas hedged in
on the terrace by two ancient cannons that guard the entrance
to the college. On this campus-estate Christian delegates from
the far corners of the earth lived, met, and played together.
The world of revolution from which they had come was upper-
most in their minds. Each would return to its strife. But the
life of a lived tomorrow was the priceless gift they could take
back to that world.
Unity in Diversity
For most of the one hundred and twelve missionary folk from
forty nations gathered at Whitby this was the first opportunity
since the war to renew acquaintance with colleagues from other
lands. And from what divergent backgrounds out of the war
years they came! There were those present who had been in
prison. Some had been tortured. Others, starving, had stared
death in the face. Some had seen loved ones tortured and killed
before their eyes. There were those who had chosen the op-
58 TOMORROW IS HERE
posite horns of resistance and collaboration in the dilemma that
confronts one whose homeland is held by an enemy power.
There were others whose homes had been blasted to bits by
planes from former enemy countries now represented by persons
present as co-workers. Those who remembered the strained
nature of similar gatherings after the last war would have been
prepared for any tenseness that might have resulted.
What did emerge, however, was beyond all expectation. One
must recall that all present were convinced Christians, and prior
to the war their nurture had been in the world-wide fellowship
of the Ecumenical Movement — the great new fact of today
in the Christian church and in a world torn by hate. In the past
years each had been praying for those whom, since the desolate
blackout of war, he now saw for the first time. For months they
had been joined in prayer for the blessing of God on this meet-
ing. Spiritually they had been one. There was no separation of
distance now. All were together. This was a reunion of kindred
minds and souls. It was like a family, after a disastrous flood, dis-
covering that all its once-scattered members are safely reunited,
abundantly grateful to be together again. The living experience
of each in oneness with the other in Christ was the supreme
reality. The joy of that unity was not lessened but heightened
and made even more meaningful because of the rich diversity
of nationality, race, and experience. What mattered was that
those who knew one Lord and Father were now one in com-
mon cause and fellowship. Even the few for whom this was
the first ecumenical meeting were caught up into, transformed
by, and made a part of this fellowship whose unity and high
joy were unique. The all-pervasive sense of God's presence
and of a fellowship of shared love for God and for one an-
THE REALITY OF THE FELLOWSHIP 59
other in that presence was Whitby's most real experience.
Exhilarating, it was at the same time profoundly moving.
One who lived in the midst of such realized Christian love
could only believe, in faith and quiet assurance, that it was
a foretaste of what is to come. It was in that spirit that some-
one said, "I feel as though tomorrow has come at last.'* Indeed,
a person who had experienced what was lived at Whitby could
say gloriously, "Tomorrow is here.'"
Over the years there have been other gatherings rich in
spiritual unity. But delegates who had attended the major
ecumenical conferences of this generation were alike in their
judgment that none had equaled the unity and harmony of
fellowship that characterized Whitby. Dr. John R. Mott, the
only Whitby delegate present at every meeting of the Inter-
national Missionary Council from Edinburgh on, stated that
never in all his experience had he known a gathering of more
manifest unity of spirit and purpose.
Whitby and Its Predecessors
In the words of the International Missionary Council's
chairman, Bishop James C. Baker of the Methodist Church,
Whitby stood in the same succession and was "quite as much a
meeting of the International Missionary Council as Jerusalem
and Madras." But Whitby differed in several respects from its
predecessors. Jerusalem and Madras were both meetings of the
Council, while Whitby was an enlarged meeting of the Committee
of the Council. Numerically Whitby was smaller, and, as one
would expect, fewer countries were represented. Including
regular and fraternal delegates, speakers, officers, consultants,
and staff, there were 112 conference members from 40 different
60 TOMORROW IS HERE
countries. Of these members 36 were from the younger churches.
Thus with 32 per cent of its constituency from the younger
churches, Whitby was more representative of the younger
churches than was Jerusalem, but less representative than
Madras. If, however, one's percentage is reckoned on the 68
persons representing countries, then Whitby was slightly more
representative of the younger churches than Madras. Seven per
cent of Whitby's members were women. Proportionally only
about one-half as many were present as at Madras. The average
age of Whitby's delegates was fifty-two.
The Post-Mott Era
When the conference assembled for its first formal meeting,
John R. Mott, who had chaired superbly Edinburgh, Jerusalem,
and Madras, no longer sat first in command. This elder states-
man of the church, whose hand more than any other had
guided the International Missionary Council from its inception,
had retired from its chairmanship five years before the Whitby
conference. During sixty years of devoted and Herculean service
to world Christianity, he had given incomparable leadership
in five great ecumenical organizations. But at Whitby, not far
from the chair that had once been his, he sat regularly in the
front row among the delegates. Since Madras an epoch in the
history of modern missions had passed. People spoke now of
"the post-Mott era." Deep emotion surged through the con-
ference as Dr. Mott, eighty-two, but as in earlier days with
keen, piercing eyes deeply recessed beneath bushy eyebrows,
stood to deliver the opening address. The assembled missionary
leaders arose as a man in tribute, applauding with heartfelt
gratitude this giant whose labors were unique.
THE REALITY OF THE FELLOWSHIP 6l
A World Purview
The initial task of the conference was to gain a comprehensive
view of the state of the churches in various countries at the
close of the war. The first country to be heard from was Japan,
and by common accord the presentation was the most complete
and thorough analysis given. But it was made by an American.
Dr. Charles W. Iglehart had prepared it "at the last minute when
it became apparent that the delegate from Japan could not
attend. The Japanese who was to have been present had been
turned back at the dock in Japan as the result of a decision by
the Far Eastern Commission (established, it will be recalled, by
the victorious powers). This decision was deeply regretted many
times during the conference. The Japanese delegate's coming
had been anticipated, because it had the approval of General
Douglas MacArthur, commander of the occupying forces in
Japan. His absence left Japan the only member country of the
Committee of the International Missionary Council not repre-
sented at Whitby.
Asia was the first continent surveyed. Bishop W. Y. Chen of
the Methodist Church was especially admired by the newsmen
for his forthright honesty in describing the situation in his home-
land, China. Interestingly enough, the Bishop had never at-
tended a theological seminary. He entered the ministry as a
"local preacher," that peculiarly Methodist institution by
which a layman is licensed to preach. His ordination to the
ministry came some years later. Two capable leaders from
Korea, Dr. Kwan Sik Kim and Dr. Fritz Hongkyu Pyen,
reported for their country. Delegates quickly appreciated Dr.
Pyen's quick mind and cheerful manner, but few knew the
6Z TOMORROW IS HERE
story of how he had been tortured, several times almost to
death, in a wartime Japanese prison. During his imprisonment
no pain had been intense enough to bring him to recant his
faith. In fact, the effect of this witness on his jailor combined
with other factors to cause the latter first to fear the God of the
Christian and then so to admire his prisoner that he released
him.
It was a woman, Dr. Josefa llano, who reported for the
Philippines. In her gay and elaborate native dress, a mestisa
made of pineapple fiber, she was strikingly attractive. Al-
though petite and demure, she could pour out her heart and
move her audience with dynamic force. It was difficult to
imagine this small, attractive woman beside an operating table;
but she had been a surgeon foi: twenty years* She had seen her
islands invaded and she had witnessed the savage butchery of
war. It was even more difficult to picture her following with
two loyal friends in the wake of the infamous Bataan "Death
March," and until she was forced to flee to the hills, caring for
those who fell by the wayside. When Dr. llano spoke of an
unshakable faith in Christ that no bomb or bayonet could
destroy, tears welled up in her eyes, for those same eyes had
beheld members of her own family put to death by bomb and
bayonet. Her experiences not only tested but deepened her
Christian faith. When she returns now to her people, it will not
be as a surgeon. Shortly before Dr. llano left the Philippines, a
crashing tree pinned her to earth and so injured her right side
that she can no longer wield a scalpel. She is content to be a
practising physician and so continue her twofold ministry to
physical and spiritual need.
In the first conference session, when the names of those
THE REALITY OF THE FELLOWSHIP 63
present were read, the three German representatives received
the only ovation accorded to delegates. That ovation was a
symbol of the warm gratitude with which they were welcomed
into a fellowship from which their faces had long been absent.
As the situation in Germany was surveyed by Dr. Karl Harten-
stein, Pralat of Wiirttemberg, persons strained attentively to
hear every word. He affirmed that through the past ten years
the source of deepest comfort to Christians in Germany was
the knowledge that they were part of the ecumenical church.
And many were surprised to hear Dr. Walter Freytag, director
of the German Evangelical Missionary Council and professor
of missions at Hamburg and Kiel, tell how, in a school of suf-
fering and poverty, thousands of young Christian missionary
candidates in Germany are being trained for service. One by
one the nations were heard from until the three-day world
survey was completed.
Women of the Younger Churches
The caliber and ability of the women from the younger
churches were most impressive. What eloquent testimony each
bore in her own life to the power of the Christian Gospel! It is
only regrettable that too few were present to represent ade-
quately the share of women in the world mission of the church.
Mention has already been made of Dr. llano. She had a colleague
from China in Dr. Wang (Mrs. Pao-Chun Nyi). Dr. Wang,
who was trained at Johns Hopkins in the United States and who
speaks perfect English, is chief gynecologist at Margaret Wil-
liamson Hospital in Shanghai, where her husband is a leading
surgeon. In addition to practising medicine and doing church
work, she has reared a son, who is also studying medicine. Miss
64 TOMORROW IS HERE
Violetta Cavallero of Uruguay spoke for the Christian women
of Latin America. With what eloquent simplicity this young
woman reminded the conference that, in any total or effective
program of evangelism, it must make adequate provision for
the Christian nurture and training of children! Present also
was Mrs. Prem Nath Dass of India, president emeritus of
Isabella Thoburn College at Lucknow and holder of several
doctorates. She was equally at home discussing with churchmen
the future of the church in India and sitting on the lawn in the
midst of a group of Whitby children telling stories of her native
land. One surmised, however, since her own children are now
grown, that she preferred the youngsters to the churchmen.
In her native saris of brilliant red, yellow, or green, Mrs. Dass
was the most colorfully dressed person at Whitby.
Whitby out of Session
What is now the total conference experience took place as
much outside the assembly hall as inside. One could sit at the
dinner table with Christians of eight nations. Several of the
news reporters, enjoying this experience for the first time, were
as thrilled as any delegate. One man, on assignment for Reuters
and the Associated Press, admitted that he was greatly impressed
by the frankness and clear thinking of these missionary folk,
and added that any one meal was the equivalent of a semester
course in college! Another suggested that the feet that the
"hardboiled" press had devoted so much space to the "brother-
hood" of Whitby indicated how much real news value the
conference had.
Each morning there was coffee, and each afternoon, tea. These
periods afforded a mid-session pickup with pleasant conversation.
THE REALITY O* THE FELLOWSHIP 65
They also provided the hard-working secretaries and staff
momentary relaxation from their duties. Nevertheless, Dr.
John W. Decker, the council's New York secretary, and the
Reverend Norman Goodall, its London secretary, used most of
these occasions for further consultations with their colleagues,
Dr. Leland S. Albright of New York, the Reverend Charles
W. Ranson of London (who more than any other person was
responsible for the preparation of Whitby's program), and the
Misses Betty D. Gibson, Doris BL Standley, Margaret Sinclair,
and Margaret Wrong of London. No one attending the sessions
will forget the modest hesitancy with which Mr. Ranson, a
former missionary in India, from his seat at the secretaries*
table, would ask the chair for the floor. Tall and able, he spoke
with earnest conviction and force. The conference made a
happy choice when it elected him to the newly-created post of
general secretary of the International Missionary Council.
A Conference in Tomorrow's World
In several ways the conference was part of the tomorrow that
is here. Not only are missionaries using the latest equipment in
radio for their work, but from Whitby they were heard by the
world through that same medium. One major American net-
work carried a half-hour program of the conference. And a
service of worship from Whitby was beamed to the world by
the British Broadcasting Corporation. Just before air time, the
Canadian announcer, impressed by the atmosphere of the meet-
ing, urged that delegates try to send that same spirit over the
air. But after a moment's reflection he added, "I know it will
carry over. It's so genuine." He had caught it in just a few
moments!
66 TOMORROW IS HERE
The airplane also figured prominently. President H, P. Van
Dusen of Union Theological Seminary in New York, who gave
outstanding and prophetic leadership at Whitby, and Dr. O.
Frederick Nolde, director of the Commission of the Churches
on International Affairs (jointly sponsored by the World Coun-
cil of Churches and the International Missionary Council) had
been in Geneva at a committee session of the World Council of
Churches in the days immediately prior to Whitby. Trans-
oceanic plane service enabled them to lose only one day between
sessions in Geneva and Whitby! Bishop Stephen Neill, assistant
to the Archbishop of Canterbury, had been in the same sessions
at Geneva. Flying directly to Whitby, he shouldered in the
drafting committee the major responsibility for producing and
subsequently revising the Whitby report. His two-weeks work
completed, he flew to Oslo, Norway, to preach at the final
Sunday service of the World Conference of Christian Youth
that was meeting simultaneously with Whitby. Certainly the
world in which Whitby was set is already living in a techno-
logical tomorrow.
The Eternal Gospel
Three days out of the heart of the conference were given to
discover afresh the eternal Gospel The chapter that follows
is intended as a fuller interpretation of those days; but here let
it be noted that in its consideration of "the Given Word" and
in its concern for the articulation of that Word to mankind, the
conference enlisted in its service the best minds of the younger
and older churches. Dr. John Baillie, of Scotland; Principal
David G. Moses, of India; Professor Walter Freytag, of Ger-
many; Professor T. C. Chao, of China; and President H. P.
THE REALITY OP THE FELLOWSHIP 67
Van Dusen, of the United States, all contributed. The final ses-
sions of these days centered on the Holy Spirit as "the Dynamic
Word," and were conducted by Professor Lootfy Levonian, of
Lebanon, and President John Mackay, of the United States.
A New Relationship
To consider the relationship of the younger and older churches
as partners in obedience to the Great Commission, members of
the younger churches and members of the older churches sepa-
rated into two groups. An observer would have been thrilled by
the meeting of the younger church leaders. From South Africa,
from Ceylon, from Siam, from China, from Korea, from the
Fijis, from Mexico, Brazil, and Argentina, from Iran and Leb-
anon, these delegates sat together seeking answers for their
shared problems. One would hear in English a Portuguese-
speaking Brazilian seek the permission of the floor from the
English-speaking Chinese chairman, to answer a question put
to him in English by a Tamil-speaking Malayan. The common
language here, as for the entire conference, was English. Under
the capable chairmanship of the Chinese Anglican, Bishop
Robin Chen, was a group assembled from the far corners of the
earth pursuing in perfect fashion a democratic discussion.
One could not help thinking, as he listened to Mr. Rallia
Ram and Dr. Rajah Manikam of India, to Professor Gonzalo
Baez-Camargo of Mexico, to the Methodist Bishop W. Y.
Chen of China and his chairman-colleague Bishop Robin Chen,
to U Ba Hlaing of Burma, and to others, that here were men as
capable as one could find anywhere in the world. Certainly
their like could not be surpassed in any government council
or even in the United Nations.
68 TOMORROW' IS HERE
While the members of the younger churches met to draw up
their recommendations, members of the older churches were in
similar meeting. The agenda of each group included the same
thorny problems: the disparity between payments to mission-
aries and to national workers; the question whether the mission-
ary's primary responsibility is to the church to which he goes
in the field or to the church that sends him; and the role of
the giving churches in determining the policy and program of
the receiving churches. When the two groups came together
to present their reports, many could remember the heated dis-
cussions of former years on the same questions.
And then occurred a most remarkable event. First the
report of the younger churches was read, then that of the older
churches. Except for the preliminary clearance of agenda by the
respective chairmen, there had been no consultation whatsoever
between the two groups, yet the two reports in their recom-
mendations point for point were virtually identical! The air was
electric. There was a momentary pause. Someone spoke briefly of
the unique nature of these two reports. And then frpm the rear
of the room, Mrs. Dass of India suggested singing the Doxology.
And with what heartfelt gratitude it was poured forth that
morning! When it was concluded, Dr. John Mackay, President
of Princeton Seminary,, arose and spoke slowly: "This has been
the work of the Spirit. These two documents are so remarkable
that they should be allowed to stand as evidence of what two
groups of brethren can achieve when they have been working
together in common cause and seeking God's will." This was an-
other high moment (for some the highest) in a conference that
moved not to a single climax, but from one lofty peak to another.
No matter how one calculates the representation of the
THE REALITY OF THB FELLOWSHIP 69
younger churches, there was a oneness of spirit and outlook on the
part of both younger and older churches such as had never before
been witnessed. It was freely acknowledged that the terms
"older" and "younger" when applied to the churches had lost
much of their meaning and that in many respects they were now
outmoded. Because the delegates felt this new sense of being
yoked together as partners in one great task, the tensions that
in the past frequently had resulted between older and younger
churches were not in evidence at Whitby. That harmony and
solidarity were glorious music to the ears of all. At Whitby
"older" and "younger" were one. The prevailing spirit was
"one church for the world."
There was not a delegate who did not desperately long for
some Aladdin's lamp whose genie he might command to assem-
.ble the congregations of all churches and persons outside the
churches in his homeland so that they might experience the
united, joyous fellowship and deep, courageous hope prevailing
at Whitby. Here in very fact, vibrant and alive, was that for
which the world is starving. Could others only see and experi-
ence, they might know Him through whom came the reality
of the fellowship, through whom alone it is possible. How each
yearned that all churches of the world could share this fellow-
ship, which was the well remembered prayer in John's Gospel:
"That they may all be one; even as thou, Father, art in me, and I
in thee, that they also may be in us so that the world may believe
that thou hast sent me" For those at Whitby the tomorrow for
which mankind longs had already arrived. Then and there they
could say, "Tomorrow is here." They had lived in tomorrow.
The task was to lead others to the summit from which they
could behold the dawn of the new day.
JO TOMORROW IS HERB
News Reporters' Impressions
Significantly, before they left, two newsmen, who some days
earlier had not relished the prospect of their latest assignment,
spoke freely. Their weeks with these missionaries- and younger
church leaders, products of earlier missionary endeavor, had
worked a great change. "The average person," said one, "imag-
ines the missionary as a lone individual with a Bible under his
arm somewhere out in a wilderness. And a lot of people think
that giving for missions is like pouring money down a hole. The
missionaries we've seen are not out just to convert individuals
to add numbers to the churches. They have a whole program of
social work, medicine, and education. To see that in foreign
countries the enterprise is composed of real churches with real
problems is news to us."
The other began, "If all your church members could sit
through a conference such as this, you'd never need to worry
again about their giving/'
And to this the first quickly added, "I used to think that it
didn't matter whether I contributed to missions or not. If I
didn't, the next fellow would. But I don't have that feeling any
longer. I have a completely new conception of missions — espe-
cially this business of their being a two-way affairl"
Whitby's Final Days
In the two days that remained after the remarkable agree-
ment between the younger and older churches, the conference
went on to determine priorities and to chart the next steps in
the Christian world mission. To these another chapter is de-
voted. Delegates will remember the alert mind and the pointed
THE REALITY OB THE FELLOWSHIP JI
suggestions of Dr. Ralph E. Diffendorfer, executive secretary of
the Methodist Board of Missions in New York, and the contri-
butions of his board secretary colleagues, Dr. Charles Leber of
the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions and Dr. Jesse Wilson
of the American Baptist Foreign Mission Society. Fellow
workers from England were also heard: the Reverend H. P.
Thompson of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel,
Canon Max Warren, chaplain of the conference and general
secretary of the Church Missionary Society, and Dr. A. M.
Chirgwin of the London Missionary Society. Each morning and
evening delegates met in formal worship. In complete depend-
ence on God, they sought a plan for carrying out the Great
Commission. But it was never more apparent than in these
final days that individual prayers were ascending to the heavenly
Father from moment to moment in each session. The council
was dedicated to knowing the will of God, and how that dedi-
cation lived.
In one of the final services a hymn of German origin was sung
from the multilingual hymnbook used at Whitby. Fittingly, the
hymn, "The Work Is Thine," had been suggested by a young
Javanese minister of the Batak Church. Dr. John Mackay, who
conducted the worship, crystallized in the word "frontier"
that world from which the conference had been drawn and to
which it looked — a frontier of fianie where revolution is seen in
grim splendor, but a frontier where Jesus Christ inhabits the
wilderness and enables men devoted to his redemptive will to
face that frontier with him. At the close of another one of these
services there were prayers in many languages coming freely
from the hearts of those there made one. A man may speak flu-
ently in several languages; but when his heart is open to God, he
J2. TOMORROW IS HERE
can pray only in the freedom of his mother tongue. And the
prayers that came from the depths of Christian hearts were in
German, in Suto, in Spanish, in Tamil, and in Danish. No one
could translate them all, but in that united company of the Spirit
in which they were uttered, all were understood. In such fashion
was one heart attuned to another that as each delegate came to
the conclusion of his prayer, he was joined in his own "Amen" by
a united "Amen." The living bond, the reality of the fellowhip
in Christ, was never more real. This was a unity which no man
could create and which no man can sunder.
Those who went out from that fellowship knew that the
wounds of the world were festering above a revolution already
begun. Yet they knew that the Great Commission of their Lord
must be fulfilled in this world. The prospect was utterly stag-
gering. But it produced no despairing futility. What it did
generate was a tremendous, propulsive burst of sober, courageous
hope. This hope was born of no calculated balancing of the pos-
sible with the impossible. It came from a depth of insight into
that which cannot be shaken, into that which gives meaning to
all of life and history — the love and power of God in Christ.
Its authenticity was seen time and again in the lives of indi-
vidual persons. Its glory was made real in the unity of fellow-
ship experienced at Whitby. This hope was Whitby, for at
Whitby tomorrow had been lived.
Chaffer Four
INTERPRETING THE GOSPEL IN
THE NEW DAY
HAT HAS THE CHURCH TO SAY TO THE TOMORROW
that is here? We have seen something of the revolu-
tionary age that is on us, with its possibilities for
unequaled tragedy and for unprecedented good. We have re-
minded ourselves that the church is in a better position than
ever before to mold the entire human race. In only a few remote
countries is it without representatives. Never before has this
been true. Even during the past three and a half stormy decades
the church has grown, Christianity is more deeply rooted among
more peoples than it or any other religion or any set of ideas has
ever been. Christians are being knit into a world-wide fellow-
ship. This feet, as we have seen, was vividly demonstrated at
Whitby. In the small company that gathered there the church
of tomorrow was present, "from every nation, from all tribes
and peoples and tongues," bound together in trust and love
through a common faith and experience. The church of tomor-
row is a minority in a world that does not understand it or its
genius, that seems to be basically hostile to it and yet to be
wistfully groping toward it — at times frantically — for the
meaning of life that it preserves and for the kind of fellowship
that it achieves. What is the message of the church to that
world? How shall it be expressed to carry conviction?
74 TOMORROW IS HERE
In the yesterday that is passing the church made a contribu-
tion that is only beginning to be appreciated. Through the ef-
forts of the minorities that were gripped by the Gospel, schools
were planted across the frontiers of European settlements in the
Americas, movements that led to the abolition of Negro slavery
were begun, foundations for the profession of nursing were laid,
and the dream was nurtured and the machinery sketched for the
substitution of order for anarchy in the relations between
nations. Through these minorities — and they were very small,
for those who really believed in the world-wide mission of the
church were few ^- the Gospel was proclaimed and Christian
communities were planted and nourished in all the continents.
Among people after people languages were reduced to writing,
schools were begun, modern medicine and nursing were intro-
duced, public health services were inaugurated, improved
methods of agriculture were brought in, relief was given to
sufferers from famine, means were devised for teaching the blind
to read, and the Bible in whole or in part was translated into
more than a thousand tongues and distributed by the millions of
copies. All of this work in lands outside the Occident was ac-
complished by a missionary staff that, counting Roman Catho-
lics and Protestants, was never above 60,000 at any time, and at
an expense to the churches of the Occident that seldom reached
f 100,000,000 a year. If Protestants alone are taken into ac-
count, the totals were never above 30,000 missionaries and a cost
of $70,000,000 a year. These totals were approached only in an
unusual burst after World War I. In the reaction from that
effort and after the great depression of 1929 the totals were
much lower. That this meager force, distributed over three-
fourths of the land surface of the globe, should have accom-
INTERPRETING THE GOSPEL IN THE NEW DAY 75
plished such results is astounding and can be accounted for only
on the ground of the living power of the Gospel, Moreover, we
must also remember that democracy, as that term was defined in
the age that is passing, had as its basic conception the supreme
worth and dignity of the individual and that this belief, the core
of democracy, was derived from the Christian faith.
Because of the achievements of yesterday, in the tomorrow
that is here the church is in a better position than ever before to
give its witness to all mankind. It has a world-wide rootage and
a growing fellowship. What has it to say to the new age? What
has it to do in that age? How shall it so speak and act that its
message shall be relevant to that age? Can it meet the needs
that the men of that day believe to be crucial? These are funda-
mental questions that the church must face. To them Whitby
gave much of its time.
The Eternal Gospel
There is an eternal Gospel. It is this with which the church is
entrusted. It is this which forms the core of its message in all
ages and to all men. It is through this that men enter on their
true life.
Our earliest written record of this Gospel is in the New Testa-
ment. Thus it was to the New Testament that Whitby went, as
Christians must always go, for an authoritative description.
Yet, even there no single statement folly outlines the Gospel.
That Gospel is too great to be compressed neatly into one
formula. It refuses to be confined to confessions of faith or
creeds, for although they may and do help, even when they are
drawn from the New Testament, they are less than true to that
collection of books, itself so varied, if they claim to be complete
j6 TOMORROW IS HERE
and final. The longer and more elaborate they are, the more
likely are they to miss the mark. The New Testament is too
wise to insist that only one of its descriptions exhausts the full
meaning of the Gospel. Yet again and again the attempt must
be made to go back to the New Testament, to discern its central
message, and to phrase it in terms that are both true to the New
Testament and intelligible to those who are really seeking to
understand what it contains. This Whitby did. We must try to
reproduce what was expressed there. In doing so we shall not
quote exactly many phrases or merely summarize. We must
endeavor to enter into the spirit of what was said and to capture
it in fresh words.
First of all, we must always remember that the New Testa-
ment term is Gospel, "Good News." The word "Christianity"
never occurs in the New Testament. Instead, the changes are
rung on the Good News — news so amazing as at first to seem
incredible, too good to be true. It was news that the disciples
for joy could scarcely believe. This fact was true in New Testa-
ment times. It is true today.
The earliest summary of the content of that Good News or
glad tidings was by Jesus himself. It was: " . . . the time is ful-
filled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe
in the Gospel." It spoke of the reign or kingdom of God. This,
obviously, is a society, a community in which God's will is done.
In the prayer most familiar to Christians the reign of God is so
described: "thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as
it is in heaven." As Professor Baillie declared at Whitby: "The
burden of our Lord's message was that a new age was about to
dawn, and that men must make up their minds at once whether
they were going to belong to it and share in the blessedness of
INTERPRETING THE GOSPEL IN THE NEW DAY JJ
its consummation, or continue to live as children of the old age
and share in the doom which awaited it."
That kingdom is so utterly different from the world about it
that to enter it, even to see it, requires what is best described as a
new birth. "Unless one is born anew, he cannot see ... he
cannot enter the kingdom of God."
The new age was marked by the coming of that kingdom.
That kingdom was present, but it had not yet fully come. It was
both a present reality and a future hope. So, we may add, it is
today. It is already here, foreshadowed and in part realized in the
Christian community, but it has by no means fully arrived. We
look for its consummation.
Central in that kingdom is love, love not as that word is often
loosely employed, but in a special, quite different, and much
grander sense. The Greek word in the New Testament is agape.
It is partially described in the thirteenth chapter of First
Corinthians. It is the characteristic of God himself. "God is
agape." This love of God is closely connected with another
word, "grace," which again and again recurs in the New Testa-
ment. "Grace" means the unmerited love of God. Men can
never earn this love. They cannot deserve it. Yet it is of the very
essence of God. "Herein is love, not that we loved God but that
he loved us." Because God loves us we should love one another.
At the very heart of the Gospel is an act, or rather a series of
events "which are all part of a grand event." Through this
series of events God was doing something decisive, something
that became the focus and turning point in human history. In
these events God's love expressed itself. God spoke through the
Word, which was God himself and which became flesh and dwelt
among men. Jesus of Nazareth, Jesus Christ, the "anointed/*
y§ TOMORROW IS HERE
God incarnate, in some strange and utterly unique way both
man and God, was conceived of the Holy Spirit, born of Mary;
he taught, healed, was crucified, died, and was buried, rose from
the dead, and ever lives. All these events are part of a whole.
If any one of them had not occurred, the act would have been
incomplete. The cross is central. Here is the costly self-giving
love of God, "who did not spare his own Son but gave him up
for us all." "Christ died for our sins." He himself bore our sins
in his body on the tree." "God shows his love for us in that
while we were yet sinners Christ died for us." Yet the Cross
takes its significance from the One who died on the Cross, from
his nature, his birth, his life, his deeds, and his teachings, and
the Cross would have spelled irretrievable defeat were it not for
the resurrection. Moreover, even the resurrection did not
complete the set of events. It was followed by the coming of
the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit transformed the lives of those
who "believed."
In this word "believe" is another aspect of the Gospel The
familiar New Testament verse that as nearly as any one single
brief passage summarizes the Gospel is: "God so loved the world
that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever believeth in
Mm should not perish, but have everlasting life." Here is the
self-giving love of God in Christ, with the promise of eternal
life to those who "believe." "Believe," as the word is here used
and as it is repeatedly employed through the New Testament,
has more in it than intellectual assent. It includes that assent,
but it means the commitment of the entire self. It means
complete trust, the response of the entire personality. It is what
the New Testament often calls "faith." It is man's glad,
amazed, humble acceptance of God's love in Christ.
INTERPRETING THE GOSPEL IN THE NEW DAY 79
It is also part of the Gospel that through this response to
God's love, through "belief or "faith," men enter one by one
the kingdom of God. This also means entering on eternal life.
So radical is this change that it is described as being born again,
raised from the dead, entering into life. It is accompanied by a
fresh outlook. "Old things have passed away; and behold all
things are become new." Those who have experienced it are
"new creations." Their sins are forgiven and part of the forgive-
ness is the power to overcome sin, to be emancipated from the
bondage of sin. The sin for which men need forgiveness and
from which the Gospel frees them is not merely specific acts and
habits, although it includes these. It is a basic twist of character,
a fundamental self-centeredness, that makes satisfaction of the
self s desires the main goal of longing and endeavor. The change
may come spectacularly and abruptly. It may come by stages.
Always, if it is real, it is followed by growth. Eternal life in the
New Testament sense is not merely endless existence. That
might be hell. Eternal life is fellowship with God; it is knowing
God. Its chief characteristic is love, the kind of love that is seen
in God in Christ. The goal of that life and of that growth is
"being filled unto all the fullness of God," being perfect, as
God is perfect.
Another phase of the Good News is the emergence of a fellow-
ship of those who have entered upon this new life. It is a fellow-
ship bound together by love, the love that God has shown in
Christ. Its members are to be "tenderhearted, forgiving one
another, even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven" them. Its
members know that they have "passed from death unto life"
because they love the brethren. This fellowship, this society, is
the church. It was not perfect in New Testament times — as
80 TOMORROW IS HERB
the New Testament clearly shows. It is not perfect now. In its
¥isible manifestations, it was divided then. It is divided now.
Yet within it worked in New Testament days and is working
now a power that makes for unity in love. Part of the marvel
of Whitby was the degree to which that unity had grown and
the foretaste it gave of the unity of the world-wide church.
We have already spoken of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit
is the living God at work in the world. It is through the Spirit
that men are convicted of their sin, turn to God, and are born
again. It is through the Spirit that the characteristic "fruits" of
the Christian life appear — "love, joy, peace, long-suffering,
gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, self-control." It is on the
working of God through the Holy Spirit that ultimately the
hope of the world depends.
One other feature of the eternal Gospel must be mentioned.
The Gospel centers around an act of God in history. Through it
God continues to operate in the human scene. The Gospel is
not confined to history. It began before history. "In the begin-
ning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word
was God. ... All things were made through him." The Gospel
reaches beyond history. It speaks of eternal life. It declares the
purpose of God to be to "gather together in one all things in
Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth."
The Gospel is both this-worldly and other-worldly. Herein
lies much of its greatness. It deals with men in the midst of
time but it knows that a man who has entered on eternal life
cannot be bound by time, but goes on beyond time. Here men
are living both in time and in eternity. The community of love
of which the Gospel speaks and which it creates is here in time
and is growing. In the tomorrow that is here it is demonstrating
INTERPRETING THE GOSPEL IN THE NEW DAY 8 1
a love that rises above barriers of race, class, and nation, and is
making for reconciliation and healing. It is not yet perfect, nor
can it be within history. For its perfection and the perfection of
those who are its members we must look beyond history to that
eternity where time is no more. That its perfection will come
we are assured. This is the hope that helps to give to man the
high dignity that is one of the unique characteristics of the
Gospel and makes for meaning in the otherwise frustrating
drama of human history. Hope is an aspect of the Gospel that
we must always remember as we seek to understand it, interpret
it, and formulate what we can rightly expect of it within history.
Interpreting the Gosfel to the Tomorrow That Is Here
How shall the eternal Gospel be interpreted to the men of the
tomorrow that is here? How shall it be so expressed that its
relevance will be apparent and that it can perform its rightful
mission? The Gospel remains the same, but in each new age it
must be put into terms that are pertinent to the distinctive
needs of that age. One of the preparatory papers for Whitby
bore the striking title: "Waiting for the Word." In it was ex-
pressed the haunting urgent longing of our age for an authentic
Word from God. That Word is already here. "The Word is near
you, on your lips and in your heart (that is, the Word of faith
which we preach)." Yet, as always, that Word must be expressed
in convincing fashion.
In one sense the needs of men do not change. They are the
same from age to age. Man is ever searching for the answer to
the mysteries of life and death, for the meaning of life, for the
release from his enslavement to sin, and for God, even when he
is not aware of the precise cause of his restlessness and does not
8x TOMORROW IS HERB
know the name of God. In every age the eternal Gospel speaks
to him. Often the Bible, unaided, is the effective messenger. In
the next chapter is a striking instance of this. More frequently
the Gospel is unmistakably and convincingly conveyed through
a loving heart that is a living demonstration of the nature and
power of the Gospel. In the next chapter a number of contempo-
rary examples of this type of demonstration evidenced at
Whitby in men and women from different cultural and national
backgrounds will also be given. In every age, the Bible and trans-
formed, loving lives are the best agents of the Gospel. Men are
not to be won by any fabric of words, no matter how intelli-
gently framed or how seemingly suited to the vocabulary and
special needs of the age. They are won by the contagion of life
upon life. One loving soul sets another on fire.
Yet each age also has needs peculiar to itself and has its own
vocabulary. In seeking to meet these needs and to use this
vocabulary, Christians are in peril of twisting the meaning of
the Gospel and thereby corrupting it. This danger is always
present and can seldom if ever be fully overcome. Yet it is a risk
that must be taken. The church partially succumbed to it when
it won the Roman Empire. Out of its triumph came the Roman
Catholic Church — what some one has called "the ghost of the
Roman Empire." Protestantism owed its appeal partly to its
response to the demands of its day — rising nationalism and the
yearning for personal dignity, opportunity, and freedom. But in
consequence it became gravely distorted by them and has both
contributed to and been infected by exaggerated nationalism,
tampant individualism, and exclusively this-worldly concerns.
Christians of the tomorrow that is here must not permit this
danger to deter them. We must seek to speak to the special
INTERPRETING THE GOSPEL IN THE NEW DAY 83
demands of our age, but in such fashion that the Gospel in
practice shall be as little compromised as possible.
First of all, then, if the church is to fulfill its mission in the
tomorrow that is here, it must proclaim, as always at its best it
has proclaimed, the eternal Gospel as the answer to the con-
tinuing, persistent, unchanging needs of men. It must seek to do
this to all men, everywhere. It must endeavor to make disciples
of all nations. To be true to the commission of its Lord the
church can never be content to aim at less.
In the second place, the church must not be too eager to make
the Gospel acceptable. The Gospel was not intelligible to those
who first heard it. To the Greeks it seemed to be foolishness and
to the Jews a stumbling block. It will always seem strange; it can
never be fully assimilated to any culture without losing its
savor.
In the third place, in an age of revolution the church must
demonstrate that it is not a bulwark of an outmoded privileged
order but that the Gospel is revolutionary, and in a more
thoroughgoing and constructive sense than is any competitor.
The Gospel proclaims a newer order than does any of its rivals.
This order puts secondary what most of its new competitors
make primary — food, clothing, and shelter — and yet it
declares that if men only place first the reign of God all these
material benefits will come. This, it may be added, is literal feet.
The material things of this life wUl be far more assured if men
live by the ideals of the kingdom of God than if they follow
other faiths. These rival faiths, whether capitalism, communism,
or totalitarian nationalism in any of its forms, breed hate and
strife that destroy the very possessions they are supposed to
secure. The Gospel places a far higher value on the individual
84 TOMORROW IS HERE
than do any of its rivals, whether old or new. Though at times
interpreted imperfectly by churches, it has accomplished more
for the dignity of man than has any other force that the world
has known. If really put into practice and released in all its
power, it would do even more.
In the fourth place, in a world where physical distress and
suffering are more widespread than ever and cruelty, deliberate
or callous, has mounted, the church must give relief both to
body and spirit by sacrificial, unostentatious, compassionate self-
giving. It must also pioneer in devising and demonstrating
methods for the removal of at least some of the bases of that
suffering — in rural reconstruction, in the right kind of educa-
tion, and in the lightening of tensions among groups, races, and
nations.
In the fifth place, in a world that is desperately longing for
security and for the peace between nations that is so essential to
security, the Gospel at first sight seems disappointing. It declares
that those who purpose to be disciples of Christ must renounce
all they have and take up their cross and follow him* It also
states Christ's warning that he came not to bring peace but a
sword. We must not blink the fact that it contains these warnings.
Yet no other single factor has made more powerfully for peace
among the nations. Today the world-wide church is the most
widespread, comprehensive fellowship known to man. It has
grown in spite of the tragic wars of the present century. More
than ever must it clearly demonstrate in its own life the unity
and peace that the world craves. It has made a beginning, but
only a beginning. The fellowship at Whitby that embraced a
wide variety of races and nations must be expanded until it is
experienced by all who name the name of Christ. The church
INTERPRETING THE GOSPEL IN THE NEW DAY 85
must face the world, as Dr. Van Dusen declared at Whitby, with
a united strategy, a united message, a united program, a united
leadership, and a united community — a united community
made possible by radical conversion, by commanding rededica-
tion in the presence of one Christ and one world.
The Impossible but Assured Goal
Christians must not be deterred by the magnitude of the task.
In a day when the opposing forces are massive and aggressive
and appear to be dominant, and when Christians constitute
minorities — in most lands small minorities — the temptation
is strong to be content with defense and with holding what has
been achieved. That way lie both treason and defeat. The New
Testament picture of the church is one of besieging, not being
besieged. It is evil that is on the defensive. The church is attack-
ing. "The gates of hell," the promise reads, "shall not prevail
against it." If Christians pray sincerely "thy kingdom come,
thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven," they must do what-
ever lies in them to answer that prayer. They have the commis-
sion laid upon them to "make disciples of all nations, baptizing
them . . . teaching them to observe all things" that Jesus
commanded the little intimate circle of his immediate followers.
This commission, it need scarcely be said, is breath-taking — to
teach all men to live up to the ideals of the Sermon on the
Mount. These ideals are so demanding as seemingly to be beyond
the attainment of the choicest few. Yet, if Christians are true to
their faith they can never be content with anything less than
this goal. The church must embark on a program of world- wide
evangelism, and that evangelism must have as an ideal the full
sweep of the Lord's prayer and of the Great Commission.
86 TOMORROW IS HERE
If the church is to live up to its mission in this tomorrow that
is upon us, there must be revival and thoroughgoing reform. The
church as we now know it can never accomplish the task. It is
too divided, it has too much "conformed to this world," the
bulk of its members have too generally accepted in practice the
standards of the community really to carry through the Great
Commission. What is needed is a reform even more drastic than
that of the Protestant Reformation. The church must so give
itself to its Lord that it will discover the power of the Gospel as
never before, or, rather, be discovered by it.
What hope can there be that these goals will be attained? Is it
not sheer lack of realism to dream that the church will be so
stirred, so revitalized and reformed, that it will become a suffi-
ciently living force to attain its goal? Even if it were to be thus
revived, is not the goal so high and the world so corrupt that the
Great Commission is a fantastic impossibility? Again and again
and in many different ways the New Testament seems to warn
us that we cannot expect God's will to be done fully within
history. There is to be a consummation, a "harvest," and the
wheat and the weeds are both to grow until that decisive event.
These questions, so sobering because they seem to be so in
accord with experience and with the New Testament, must be
faced, but they need neither dishearten nor deter us. The ideal
and the command are there. They are obviously of God. In our
heart of hearts we know that they are inherent in the very
nature of our faith. So far as lies in us we must be true to God.
The power and the fruitage, like the command, are not ours but
God's. Again and again experience has proved that as men ven-
ture out on the commands and promises of God a power flows
into them that is not of themselves and that transforms them.
INTERPRETUsTG THE GOSPEL I3ST THE NEW DAY 87
Results follow, out of all proportion to the human effort ex-
pended and often quite unexpected. Who would have antici-
pated the present world-wide Christian fellowship at the begin-
ning of the recent era of Protestant missions? Who would have
predicted all the revolutions and the healing, constructive
movements the world over that have followed the efforts of the
lone individuals and small groups that have staffed and supported
the missionary enterprise? The church itself had its beginning
in a little company, approximately the size of that at Whitby,
followers of a crucified and, from the point of view of the casual
observer, frustrated and defeated leader. We dare not wait for
the reformation of the entire church. Great revivals and reforms
have always started with individuals who became the attractive
centers of small groups. We who write these words and those
who read them must begin now. We must give ourselves afresh
to God as disciples of his Son and trust his Holy Spirit to use
us as he will. "Be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in
the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is
not in vain."
Chapter Five
THE ETERNAL GOSPEL REALIZED
IN LIFE
WHITBY PROVIDED A REMARKABLE DEMONSTRATION
of the transforming power of the eternal Gospel
in human life. Nearly one in ten of its members
was a ''first-generation Christian" — one who had not inher-
ited his Christian allegiance, but had himself come directly into
Christianity from a nominal or a non-Christian background.
Consider the significance of that fact. One tenth of those at
Whitby entrusted with future plans for the Christian world
mission had entered the community of Christian faith within
their adult lifetimes. The wonder, glory, and power of the Gos-
pel are often most strikingly seen in such lives, transformed
and made strong.
One of Whitby's most memorable experiences came in a
session not originally scheduled, when several first-generation
Christians shared with those present the stories of their conver-
sions. These delegates, whose homelands encircle the globe,
offered living proof that the needs of men are universal and that
the appeal of the Gospel is limited by neither race nor culture.
While all were born in a day that is passing, all are still in early
middle life and are leaders in the tomorrow that is here.
The backgrounds from which these people came into the
Christian faith varied. One was reared in a Chinese Confucian
THE ETERNAL GOSPEL REALIZED IN LIFE 89
family. Still another had been an Indian Brahman. Two had
been nominal Christians. One had come from a background of
secularism in Europe. Finally, one who was present at that ses-
sion and whose story is here recorded, although he did not
speak, had been a Moslem Sufi in India. Each account is evi-
dence that in the present tomorrow as in all the yesterdays, the
Gospel speaks in every language to man's condition and that
through it the miracle of the new birth is ever repeated.
A Chinese
Chen Wen-yuen, the son of a Confucian scholar, was reared
in the traditional Confucian pattern. In his family, as in many
Chinese families, grandparents, parents, uncles, aunts, cousins,
and children — thirty members — all lived under one roof,
with the old grandmother as head of the family. When young
Chen was thirteen, his parents sent him off to school, to the
Anglo-Chinese College of Foochow, a Methodist institution.
This was the lad's first contact with the foreigner, with the
Bible, and with the church. "All these were often hostile to
my thinking," he narrated, "and I joined a student group
opposed to the Christian religion and shortly became its ring-
leader."
Chen's school days came before the establishment of the Re-
public of China when students wore the then common Chinese
queue — the long hair braid. In class, however, there was one
student who wore his hair short. "I was much attracted to him,**
said Chen. "He was president of the student Y.M.C.A. and
leader of the Student Volunteer Group, As we became better
friends, he offered to share his room with me." Much as Chen
wanted to accept this offer of friendship, he was dubious, be-
QO TOMORROW' IS HERE
cause this student was a Christian. Although he was much im-
pressed with this particular Christian, he wanted no part of
Christianity. Yet the student as a friend and leader appealed to
Chen so much that he decided to try living with him on one
condition. "We became roommates with the understanding
that he would not talk to me about the Christian faith. This
agreement he faithfully kept."
Each Sunday afternoon the Christian student went out with
one of the missionaries to preach on street corners. One, two
— six months passed and in all that time Chen's roommate
never mentioned Christianity to him. But Chen's curiosity was
aroused. What did these Christians preach about? One after-
noon he accompanied his friend to observe the street meeting
and find out. What the Christian student said burned deeply
in Chen's heart, but while he spoke, an older Chinese in the
crowd began to taunt him. "Look at that young Christian
without a queue! Only the foreigners wear short hair. Anyone
who becomes a Christian becomes a foreignerF'
Although he was not a Christian, Chen had learned deeply to
admire and respect his roommate. This unwarranted attack on
him was too much. Boldly proclaiming what was fact, Chen
came to the defense of his friend. "What this man says is not so.
The queue is foreign! It was forced on the Chinese by the
Manchus three hundred years ago!" and then, inspired by his
own force, he went on, not knowing why he said what he did
next. "If Christianity is true, it is not foreign. Any religion
which is true is true anywhere. It cannot be foreign."
That night Chen could not sleep. He was miserable. The
months of close day-to-day living with his Christian roommate
had had a pronounced effect on him. Thoughts of the afternoon
THE ETERNAL GOSPEL REALIZED IN LIFE 91
flooded his mind, and he realized that he was living without
Christ. The first rays of the morning sun pouring into his room
illuminated the picture that hung above his roommate's bed,
a picture of Christ praying in Gethsemane. Chen's heart was
stirred. "I saw that Christ was praying for sinners. He was
praying for me. I went over and knelt by my friend's bed before
that picture, and something then and there happened to me. I
told my friend that my battle was over. I would receive Christ
into my heart. When I went outside, the whole universe seemed
wonderfully different, more beautiful. Even the words of Con-
fiicius, Mencius, and the other sages seemed more vivid than
before, It was a new world, and I was a new creature in it."
After that it was not always easy. "But I realized," said Chen,
"that the Word of God is dynamic. It did not stop with me as
did the words of Confucius and Mencius, I became restless to
declare it to my own family. The WTord of God in me had to
grow, to burst out in an explosion — and the first object of that
explosion was my grandmother. She consented to go to church
only because it was her grandson who asked her. But the explo-
sion was successful! When my grandmother became a Chris-
tian, she was sixty-four. Then she, the oldest member of the
family, and I, the youngest, began to win the others. She
worked from the top down and I from the bottom up. And to-
day the great majority of my family are Christians."
When he had completed this part of his story, Bishop Chen
attached a postscript, "There are four points I would like to add
which I draw from my own experience. First, God has various
ways of communicating his Word, Second, a little incident in
life may serve as a channel through which God speaks to a man.
Third, God's Word fulfills the sayings of the Chinese sages; it
CjZ TOMORROW IS HERE
enriches, completes, and brings them back to life. Fourth,
God's Word has an explosive power. It also grows and overflows
one's life." 1
A Cuban
When Francisco Garcia was born, his parents were members
of the Roman Catholic Church in Cuba, and he was baptized in
that church. As he grew up, he attended church regularly.
However, after his twelfth birthday he lost interest and, as did
so many of his friends, regarded churchgoing to be for women
and children. At Whitby Scnor Garcia declared, "From the
time I was twelve until I was twenty, I had no real Christian life.
When I was converted, I was not an active Roman Catholic
communicant. I said my prayers every night and considered my-
self a Catholic, but I had never seen a Bible and had never
heard a real sermon. I had an idea of many saints and of a God
remote from me, but I had no interest in the church."
One day a friend asked the young senor to visit a meeting of
Christians in his home. The youthful Garcia was not interested
and turned down the invitation, but when it was repeated for
three weeks in succession, he relented. In that small home
meeting for the first time he heard a Cuban minister preach. He
returned again and again. The Gospel proclaimed there awak-
ened his deepest interest. His next decision was to attend the
near-by Presbyterian church regularly. When the church gave
him a New Testament, he read it eagerly.
Francisco Garcia continued to go to the church and to read
1 The Reverend Bishop Chen Wen-yuen received his B.A. and M.A. from Syra-
cuse University and his Ph.D. from Duke University. One-time acting president
of Fukien Christian University, he is now honorary general secretary of the Na-
tional Christian Council of China and a hishop of the Methodist Church.
THE ETERNAL GOSPEL REALIZED IN* LIFE 93
his New Testament. And then, just before Holy Week, he
attended a series of special services, at which time, he explained,
"An invitation was given to all who wanted to accept Christ as
a personal Saviour. When the invitation carne, I stood and con-
fessed my Lord. I did this because I knew that I was a sinner and
needed a Saviour. Following that decision, I attended for three
months a training class for church membership. At the conclu-
sion of the course, I was admitted into the church."
"Since then," continued Garcia, "I have had my ups and
downs in the Christian faith. But I saw all along the glory in the
lives of Christians who are wholly consecrated to the Lord, and
that helped me to give my life completely. Later the Spirit of
God led me to dedicate my life to his service. And for fifteen
years I have been preaching the same Gospel and Lord who
saved me. I know only one way that I can save people from sin,
and that is to tell them forthrightly what sin is in their own
lives and how Jesus Christ is the Saviour of all mankind." l
An Indian
"I belong to a group of people so near to the kingdom of
God that it is difficult for any member to enter that kingdom.
They have become so deeply entrenched in themselves and are
so proud of their history that they are the bitterest opponents
of the Christian faith and church." The Reverend Paul Rama-
seshan was speaking of India's highest caste, the Brahmans,
among whom he had been reared and educated. One's thoughts
immediately traveled back to Paul and the Pharisees. But he
1 Educated at Toccoa Falls Bible Institute and tie Evangelical Seminary of
Puerto Rico, the Reverend Francisco de la Paz Garcia y Serpa is pastor of the
First Presbyterian Church in Havana, Cuba,
94 TOMORROW IS HERE
went on, "So carefully were we segregated that not even normal
contacts with Christians were possible."
One day something little short of an earthquake happened to
young Ramaseshan that changed the entire course of his life. It
was not a reasoned argument. It was a deep experience. But let
him relate it. "An Indian Christian came to our village regularly
to preach, and just as regularly over a period of six months a
gang of boys, of whom I was the leader, made it their sport to
stone him and his party. One night after we had thrown our
stones, I failed to run soon enough or fast enough and was
caught by one of the preaching party. I looked into the eyes of
the man who held me. The affectionate sympathy and the
abounding love that I saw in his face completely changed my
sense of values. This man, instead of cuffing me, treated me
kindly and spoke to me lovingly. Then and there I promised to
read whatever he would give me."
Ramaseshan, the stone thrower, received that day a copy of
the four Gospels. Recalling the experience, he continued,
"Something that I could not understand gripped me in the
words of the Gospels. Although I could not comprehend all
their meaning, I read them always with this man's loving face
before me. There was something in the book that gave me a
passion. Then in the providence of God I was led on to someone
who could help me. He became my 'father in Christ.5 In his
fellowship I found the meaning of love — the love that had
shone in the face of that first Christian who spoke to me." A
Brahman had been found of God, and he accepted Jesus Christ
as his Lord and Saviour.
The decision to become a Christian was costly. It meant the
loss of old friends. It meant severing all family ties. The legal
THE ETERNAL GOSPEL REALIZED IN LIFE 95
career for which his family had been grooming him had to be
forgotten. When the Brahman Ramaseshan became a Christian,
he was certain in mind and heart that God wanted him to enter
the ministry. That meant turning his back on everyone and
everything in life dear to him. Yet it was as nothing, for as he
says, "In return I have found Christ as Lord."1
A Filipino,
The reader is already acquainted with Dr. Josefa llano. Her
father and other relatives had rebelled against the Roman
Catholic Church in the Philippines. However, when she was a
young girl, she was sent to her grandmother, a devout Catholic,
and reared by her in that faith. When Josefa reached college
age, she attended Silliman University, a Presbyterian school.
But the college girl was not happy. Religiously she was hungry
— seeking; for, as she said, "My life was completely empty. I
had prayed to the Virgin Mary and to all the women saints —
never to the men. But I had no Saviour."
During her course at Silliman, Miss llano attended one of a
series of evangelistic meetings that were then being held. Of
them she said, "I went for six nights, but was not especially
interested. However, on the seventh night, I heard the words,
1 am the resurrection and the life/ *I am the light of the world.*
And then it was as though I saw Christ's hands stretched out
and heard his voice saying, 'Come unto me all ye that labor and
are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.' Suddenly I felt tired
and weary, searching and groping in the darkness for the light,
My life had been sheltered, and I had been provided with every
lThe Reverend Paul Ramaseshan is a minister of the Methodist Church and
principal of the South India Training Institution Madras, India.
96 TOMORROW IS HERE
material thing. Yet something was lacking. Life was empty
because I did not have a personal Saviour. This I knew on that
seventh night of the meetings, and so I accepted Christ and found
my Saviour and Lord."
When Josefa llano was graduated from college, she went on
to the University of the Philippines for her medical training. It
is never easy for a woman in medical school where virtually all
the faculty members and students are men. But there was
another far more serious difficulty. Miss llano, explaining it,
said, "I was persecuted. Difficulties and obstacles were put in
my way because I had accepted the Evangelical faith. Con-
flicting thoughts began to crowd my mind, and so I began writ-
ing to the minister who had baptized me. When he answered,
he mentioned only Bible verses. This led me to read, to search,
and to study the Bible. In this way I felt something growing
within me, and with each passing year of my life, I knew that I
was experiencing a slow, yet steadfast and ever-increasing
spiritual growth because of him who was my Lord and Master,
my guide and friend and personal Saviour."
To those who know Miss llano, it is evident that this growth
continues in a remarkable fashion. She was flown to the United
States for a speaking tour in 1946-1947 with two other Chris-
tian women from China and Japan. On the first day, at the
dinner table, seated next to Mrs. Tamaki Uemura, the only
woman allowed to leave Japan in two years after the war, she
could not bring herself to speak to her Japanese colleague.
She avoided her glance. Josefa llano's mind was filled with
scenes of horror, pillage, and death caused by Japanese in the
Philippines. She felt within that she could never forgive any
Japanese for what she had seen and experienced.
THE ETERNAL GOSPEL REALIZED IN LIFE 97
That first night they were lodged in a women's college
dormitory. The next morning Miss llano heard a knock at her
door. When she opened it, there stood her Japanese companion,
"Her head was bowed, and she asked only, 'May we go to
breakfast together?' We walked in silence through the long
corridor, went downstairs, and there entered a small room alone.
When Mrs. Uemura looked at me, her face was filled with
humility and radiant love such as I had never seen before, and
she said, 'Dr. llano, will you forgive me and my people for the
suffering inflicted on you in the Philippines?' In that moment
we both fell to our knees and prayed only as can Christians who
have suffered much. Together in humble confession of our sins
before God, we knew that the love of Christ was filling our
hearts and drawing us together. After that we cried, but we
went in to breakfast together, smiling. The people could see
what had happened, and they were very happy. On that trip
Mrs. Uemura and I became fast friends. It was she in her humble,
saintly life who taught me the real meaning of Christ's love.
Through her I learned forgiveness and that there is nothing that
can separate those who are united by the love of Christ." l
A Belgian
"From shirt sleeves to shirt sleeves in three generations" is
the familiar story of a family's economic rise and fall. It has its
religious counterpart. Colonel Robert firnest van Goethem
comes of an old Belgian bourgeois family that can trace its
ancestry back for centuries. His great-grandfather had been
1 Miss Josefa M. Hano received her B.A. from Silliman University and her M.IX
from the University of the Philippines in 1927. A member of the United Evangelical
Church, she is an elder in her local church in Manila. A practising physician, she is
also a recognized leader in the Philippine Federation of the Evangelical Churches.
5 8 TOMORROW IS HERE
converted by a colporteur of the British and Foreign Bible
Society. His grandfather, more interested in philosophy and
business, was a nominal Christian and left his father's church
for a more formal congregation. His parents were "free think-
ers." The cycle from non-Christian to non-Christian took only
three generations. Van Goethem himself, reared a secularist, is
now chief of Protestant chaplains of the Belgian Forces.
When young Robert was growing up, he never heard any
discussion of religion in his home. He was educated at a school
in which no religion was taught and where he and all his friends,
on political grounds, were anti-Roman Catholic. In 1916, with
a group of students on their way to Holland to join the army, he
was taken prisoner by the Germans. His one consuming desire
in prison was to be free — to be able to do as he desired. With
his release in 1918 young van Goethem indulged himself in wild
and reckless living. His father, somewhat disturbed by his
mode of life, decided that what he needed to settle him was a
stint as a gentleman farmer. He bought his son a i6o-acre farm
in Alberta and shipped him off to Canada.
Van Goethem 's habits were not readily changed. "Besides,"
as he said, "the farm was 160 acres of bush and called only for
hard work. I spent most of my time in the town, and in a short
while, through gambling, lost all that I had, including the farm.
At the time I was conscious of the fact that I was doing wrong. I
thought a change of environment would change me, and so I
went to Alaska to find a new beginning. It was the same thing
there for a year and a half. I was still restless. Then I went down
the coast as far as Hollywood and Los Angeles. All the time I
was vainly searching for something that would satisfy me."
The discontented Belgkn, seeking new sights and new experi-
THE ETERNAL GOSPEL REALIZED IN LIFE 99
ences, was wandering around the streets of Los Angeles one
Thanksgiving evening when he passed a group of young Chris-
tians. They were conducting a Gospel meeting out on the street,
and one of them invited the stranger to come into the church.
As van Goethem explained, "I had never been in a church, so I
went in and listened to the preaching of the Gospel. I could not
really understand what was said, because all the terms they used
were like a foreign language to me. But I began to think. For a
long time I had been searching. It had never occurred to me to
look in a church for what I was seeking. And there in that
church the spirit of God corrvicted me of sin. What I had been
trying to escape came to me. At the close of the meeting the
good man in charge said that if anyone present wished to be
saved from sin, he should believe in Jesus Christ as his Saviour.
I did not know much about it then, but in those words God and
the whole of heaven seemed to open to me. I said 'Yes/ for
those words were a light to my soul.*'
When the service was concluded, the minister met with him
and asked him if he did not wish to pray. To this the young
convert frankly replied, "I do not know how." As he continued
the story, "The minister then taught me the prayer of the
publican, Tx>rd, be merciful to me a sinner.' This became my
prayer, and I went home, knowing that something had changed
me. . . . Night after night I went to those meetings, and the
young people continued to help me read and understand the
New Testament. Day after day we prayed. With things now
changed in my life, I wanted only to go back to Belgium, and I
decided to return to my home. No longer was I seeking a change
of environment, for I had experienced a change of heart. God's
Word was life to me/'
IOO TOMORROW IS JtUtiJfcUi
During World War II van Goethem was again in prison —
but this time for his preaching. "It was different now," he said,
"Even though I was in solitary confinement, I had my Bible,
God was with me and I never felt so free. Secretly, I managed tc
communicate with the paratrooper next to me who was con-
demned to death. All he could say was, 'It is hell to be alone with
oneself/ I replied, 'It is wonderful to be alone with God.' Then
I managed to pass him my Bible, and we prayed together —
always in secret. He read the Bible and was won to Christ* You
may know the peace and joy which filled my heart when I
learned that as he was put to death his last words were, It is
wonderful to be alone with God.' " l
An Indian
Abdus-Subhan came from a long line of Indian sufis,*the holy
men of Islam who work magic and can repeat the Koran by
heart. Reared as he was in the lore of Islam, Abdus — later called
John — very early became a mystic. Before he was ten he had
read the entire Koran and had begun to memorize it. He ob-
served all the prayers and fasts, and with a holy passion he hated
Christians. As a young boy he began his search for God. He
became something of a worker of magic and was besieged by
those who sought the benefits of his powers. And then, what
heretofore had been unheard of, he became a sufi at the age of
thirteen and was initiated into the secrets of that religious order.
It became his purpose as a mystic to seek perfection and a true
knowledge of God, and eventually to know union with Allah.
1 Colonel Robert E. van Goethem was educated at the University of Brussels and
later at the Bible Institute of Los Angeles and the Methodist Pastoral School oi
Belgium. A Methodist minister, he was recently made chief Protestant chaplain oi
the Belgian and Colonial Forces.
THE ETERNAL GOSPEL REALIZED IN LIFE IOI
One day a Moslem friend who had received a copy of a
Gospel from an itinerant evangelist gave it to Abdus-Subhan.
Abdus-Subhan ripped it apart, for his teacher had warned him
that it contained words of blasphemy that would pollute the
soul of a believer. But when later he received a second copy of
one of the Gospels, an inner urge led him to read it. The result
was startling. Abdus-Subhan saw nothing blasphemous in the
Gospel, and its ethical standards were exalted. If Christians had
invented the story, they would never have included the shame-
ful death of the Master, or caused him to reappear only to his
disciples while his enemies remained triumphant over his death.
As the youthful sufi read, he became convinced that this was
God's Word and Revelation! He had never seen or heard a
missionary. He had read only one Gospel, but he said, "It was
sufficient! I decided to become a Christian." God had found
him.
The young lad could discover no one who would instruct him
and make him a Christian, and so, securing a Bible, he went
through it unaided and came to a fair understanding of Chris-
tianity. One day he saw a circular of the Young Men's Christian
Association and paid that institution a visit. There he met a
blind secretary who became his friend and taught him to pray.
He found that "Prayer is not a bargain with God. It is a fellow-
ship of a son with a father." The young man's heart flamed with
the love of Christ. "Nothing would satisfy me but to become his
follower ,by openly confessing him and professing his religion."
When he did so in the Moslem school he was attending, he was
cursed, spat upon, and expelled. At the same time he was refused
Christian baptism and church membership because of his age!
The youth, whose life was given to Christ, some time later
IO2. TOMORROW IS HERE
gained admittance to an Anglican high school, and he became
one of the most earnest Christians among the students. He
preached on street corners. He visited hospitals, telling each
patient about Christ. He was a zealous evangelist — still unbap-
tized. But when he reached his fifteenth year, he was baptized
and shortly afterwards was confirmed in the Church of England.
John Subhan was still a mystic. His passion for personal
evangelism waned, and his desire for lonely communion with
Christ became more pronounced, finally leading him toward
Rome. Nine years after his baptism he became a member of the
Roman Catholic Church and began preparing for the priest-
hood. But after four years, convinced that the long hours he
spent in mystic communion were not helping others to know
God, and certain that some of the attitudes and teachings of his
superiors were contradictory to his experience and understand-
ing of the Bible, he left the Roman Catholic Church and
returned to his Protestant faith.
Later as a teacher in a Methodist theological seminary, John
Subhan was attracted by the people of that denomination
because of their emphasis on personal experience and evangelism.
He joined this church and soon became one of its ministers. He
continued to be both teacher and minister and also became a
recognized leader of the Christian church in India*
Speaking of the Christian life, John Subhan said, "No amount
of reading about mountains can give that feeling of joy which a
mountaineer experiences in actually climbing the steep peaks
and living surrounded by mountain scenery. The Christian
attitudes of life cannot be acquired by mere reading about them,
but by living in personal contact with persons who embody
them in their own lives, God is infinite and so there is no limit
THE ETERNAL GOSPEL REALIZED IN LIFE 103
to his love, goodness, and purity. Thus it is that the more we
Uve with him, the more we know of the divine qualities as he
reveals them." 1
The eternal Gospel is realized always in individual lives —
transformed, made new, and imbued with a power that no
human being can command. Still no one individual within him-
self and no one group of individuals within themselves can
begin to know or achieve the fullness of life that is in Christ.
After the Gospel had laid hold of him, how eagerly John
Subhan looked for a fuller experience of the Christian life in
fellowship with other lives. It was Mrs. Uemura whose loving
spirit brought even new depth and understanding into Josefa
llano's life, made new as it had been a quarter of a century
earlier. Each person grows in the Christian life as he learns to
receive the particular witness and contribution of other Chris-
tians. That is why every Christian needs the fellowship of the
congregation and why every congregation needs the larger fel-
lowship of the world Christian community.
Nor can an individual made new by the Gospel of Christ
contain the gift of the new life within. That new life must ex-
press itself. It must be shared with others. Each testimony bears
evidence to the fact. Such a life — a new creation — is never a
life unto itself. Shot through with the glory and fire of God's
loving gift, that life must ever be self-giving, for self-giving is
1 The Reverend Bishop John A. Subhan received Ms B.A. from Allahabad and
bis B.D. from Serampore. He served at one time as lecturer at Bareiliy Theological
Seminary and then at the Henry Martyn School Later he became pastor of the
Central Methodist Church in Delhi. In 1944 he was made a bishop in the Methodist
Church.
This account is based on "The Search of a Sufi," by Elmer T* Clark.
IO4 TOMORROW IS HERE
the essence of that by which it has been possessed and trans-
formed.
The initial experience of the new life that is in Christ may
come in a variety of ways: through the spoken word, through
the written word, or through an experience that articulates
without words the meaning of the Gospel. Yet it is always the
shared experience of other saintly lives that brings this new life
to its highest expression. It is the contagion of lives of Christlike
love that makes Christians. It is always thus from one life to
another that the Gospel has been made known. The communica-
tion of the Gospel depends not on thoughtful phraseology, but
on living agents, because life alone can beget life.
Chapter Six
PARTNERS IN OBEDIENCE
rT™\HE TASK THAT CONFRONTS THE CHURCHES OF THE WORLD
I Is one. The commission to that task is one, spoken to all
JL who name the name of Christ. The challenge must be
met unitedly.
That a united approach to the common task must be — can
be — achieved by the younger and older churches of the world
was made abundantly clear at Whitby. An equality, a mutualitv,
a shared partnership between the younger and older churches
such as had never before been known was manifest there.
There was no need to argue the necessity for more understanding
between the two. What had once been discussed and hoped for
was now a reality. In the very nature of things there are and will
be differences between the younger and older churches. That
feet is inescapable. But whereas in the past the relationship has
been as that between parent and child, with the frequent
recurrence of unhappy paternalism and undue dependence,
now in truth the relationship is one between brothers who recog-
nize that in their common sonship each has responsibilities for
the other, and that, together, they have responsibilities for the
world. This new partnership in obedience to God's will is part
of the tomorrow that Whitby experienced as already here.
It was not always so. Western churches, the so-called "sending
churches," provided the missionaries, supplied the money, and
J06 TOMORROW IS HERE
supervised its expenditure. Unfortunately, too, some mission-
aries were imbued with an attitude of "the white man's burden."
Paternalism and the patriarchal missionary at the head of a
small Christian community were the all too common results.
These, of course, made difficult the widespread development of
first-rate indigenous leadership — nationals who could assume
full responsibility for the welfare of the church in their home-
land.
On the other hand, there frequently has been among the
younger churches a too easy, complacent acceptance of con-
tinued dependency. Even today not more than 15 per cent of
the local congregations of the younger churches are totally
self-supporting. Some of the reasons for this must be considered
Lter. It has been most difficult, also, to claim the ablest men of
the younger churches for leadership in the church. This issues
from glaringly evident causes that must be met realistically
before any serious advance can be made. "Colonial churches"
have often resulted, with the difficulties that attend any colonial
relationship. When in the past representatives of the younger
and older churches met together in conference, the lines were
clearly drawn between them. Both shared responsibility for the
resultant friction, but each tended to recognize the other's
shortcomings only. Naturally, in conference this produced
heated discussions. The contrasting unanimity that marked
Whitby has already been noted.
Today the "colonial churches" are coming of age. Indeed,
some of the so-called "younger" churches in India are actually
older than one of the major denominations in the United States,
the Disciples of Christ. In fact, the distinction between the
terms "older" and "younger" became largely obsolete at
PARTNERS IN OBEDIENCE IOJ
Whitby, proof of the coming of age of the younger churches.
After a few minutes of wrestling with the problem of a fresh
nomenclature, it was decided to retain the familiar terms for
convenience only.
The effects of the war, with accompanying shifts in the
financial status of the churches, the shared burdens, and the
suffering together of missionaries with younger churchmen;
the growing fellowship of the churches in the Ecumenical
Movement; and the changing world scene in which communism,
secularism, religious imperialism, mechanization, and deper-
sonalization of life confront older and younger churches equally
— at Whitby all these elements combined to create a new unity
and urgency. In this changed relationship the whole problem of
effecting mutuality disappeared. Instead, younger and older
together in an accomplished mutuality undertook to outline a
single program for doing no less than carrying the Gospel to the
whole world. This was the difference between Madras and
Whitby.
Evangelism, the evangelization of the whole world — expect-
ant evangelism — in the face of an unprecedented massing of
forces opposed to Christianity — this is the one, immediate,
supreme challenge confronting the church today. This is not the
special task of the younger churches, nor of the older churches,
but of both. World evangelism — the evangelization of every
area of life by men and women ablaze with the fire of God,
torches flaming with the Gospel of Christ — is the task of the
church. The compelling urgency of a world whose agony now
may drive it to one blinding flash of atomic death leaves the
church no time for considered alternatives. The church has but
one choice, like it or not, meet it or not. The very desperation
IO8 TOMORROW IS HERE
of the world — worse now than during the war — gives the
church its one unexampled opportunity. It is momentary. But
in God's grace the moment has been thrust before the church.
The task — urgent, of unimaginable magnitude, thrilling
beyond the comprehension of man's mind — is the fulfillment
of the Great Commission.
Confronting an unprecedented world challenge, Whitby
categorically declared that all churches together must revive
and deepen their own life that the spiritual nurture of the
individual Christian may be strengthened. If the church is to be
the church, it will be so to the extent that it produces within
and without a far-reaching revival. With equal emphasis Whitby
asserted the necessity that every local church inculcate within
each member a sense of responsibility as a member of the holy
catholic church — the church universal. The unsurpassed glory
of realized kinship in the ecumenical community of world
Christianity is the divine intention for all who confess Jesus
Christ as Lord. It was never meant to be the exclusive privilege
of the leaders of the churches. But the sine qua non for the
whole of the larger accomplishment is the training by the
churches of every member according to his ability for the wor\ of
Christian witness. Wherever that is accomplished, each layman
will be bearing his own testimony in seeking the sanctification
of the life of the home, in winning the younger generation for
Christ, and in permeating all common life with Christian princi-
ples and ideals. When that witnessing is effective, it will instill
in every Christian as a son of God a sense of total stewardship
for the maintenance of the existing church and for the great
evangelistic task ahead.
On younger and older churches alike the demand of the hour
PARTNERS IN OBEDIENCE 109
is to establish pioneer work in all areas of the world where the
Gospel has not yet been preached and where the church has not
yet taken root. But within this partnership, in obedience to the
Divine Commission, one special charge is given to the older
churches and one to the younger churches. To the older
churches the commission is to make compelling to youth the
needs of younger churches and to enlist young people in the
world mission in numbers far greater than ever before. It must
be admitted with shame that among the older churches there
are many that have not yet taken seriously the obligation of
the Great Commission and that accept grudgingly, if at all,
the duty to make their ablest men and women available for
the work of the younger churches. There are still instances of
church leaders who discourage rather than encourage recruit-
ment among those best suited for missionary service. This must
be set aright. For the younger churches there is the call to put
away once for all every thwarting sense of dependence on the
older churches, and on the true ground of absolute spiritual
equality and under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, "to bear
their own distinctive witness in the world, as the instrument by
which God wills to bring to Christ the whole population of the
lands in which they dwell."
Partners in Finance
It takes money to operate a church. It takes more to launch a
program of evangelization. Much of the financial support for
projects of and among the younger churches has been given by
the older churches, and in the expenditure of money from older
churches by the younger churches tensions have arisen. Parallel
situations in family life are so common that any amplification is
HO TOMORROW IS HERE
unnecessary. The inability of so many of the younger churches
to achieve financial independence has in the past produced some
of the thorniest differences between younger and older churches.
Let the business man, impatient — if he has any interest in
missions — for the complete financial maturity of the younger
churches, ponder a few facts.
Outside the Christian community there is no other institution
like the church. There are other organized religions whose
temples are repositories for fabulous wealth compounded of
offerings given to appease an angry god, but the church is
unique. The church has been a part of Western culture and has
molded that culture for centuries. When it is transplanted,
however, it is a strange, foreign institution. To people in the
lands of the younger churches the role of the church and its
pastor is frequently misunderstood. The priest, the holy man,
and the monk are known — as professional religionists, and
their services are paid for when occasions of necessity arise. But
the Christian pastor, entrusted with the continuing care of
souls in his congregation, and supported by voluntary offerings,
seems to be an anomaly. It is difficult for a convert, himself with
only the most meager sustenance, and with scant experience in
the Christian church, to think of supporting another whose
work he can regard only as unnecessary. A further consideration
to reckon with is that converts, who once spent a large amount
of money to purchase amulets or to pay for religious services,
seldom give a comparable amount to their church. The grateful
realization that salvation by faith is the gift of 'God's free grace,
the heart of evangelical testimony, seems frequently to immu-
nize a convert against a real sense of financial responsibility for
his church, although he has just been released from the onerous
PARTNERS IN OBEDIENCE III
burden of paying heavily for the good favor of the gods. Then,
too, many who become Christians in the lands of the younger
churches are by that act cut off from former sources of income.
In some lands it still costs heavily to become a Christian. All of
these factors militate against the rapid achievement of financial
maturity by a struggling younger church.
The crux of the whole problem is this: the Western- type
church that missionaries have transplanted has been readily
supported by people accustomed to a high level of economy.
But what happens to a church's financial support when it is set
down, with all its auxiliary units, in a land whose economic level
is low? True, one must record the remarkable examples among
economically depressed people of churches that have been self-
supporting almost from their founding, as for example, the
churches of the aboriginals of Chota Nagpur, India, of the
Karens of Burma, of the Koreans, and of the Bataks of Sumatra.
But they are the exceptions. The grave difficulties involved in
the financing of the younger churches must be kept in mind
when one is considering the financial relationships between
older and younger churches.
Serious problems of salary also arise in the countries of the
younger churches. In a land not his own, the missionary has
special needs that must be met if he is to carry out his work
effectively; but the disparity in income between missionary
and national doing the same work has in the past been a cause of
friction. The same disparity exists, of course — and it, too, is
tension-producing — among nationals engaged in Christian
work. There are grave inequalities, for example, as between
doctors or teachers and ministers. Similar serious differences
exist in the salaries paid to nationals by local churches and those
1 12. TOMORROW IS HERE
paid by Western-supported institutions. The entire question, it
can be seen at a glance, is fraught with difficulty.
Whitby, recognizing the impossibility of detailed suggestions,
laid down only general principles, the application of which must
be left to the wisdom and Christian spirit of the churches in-
volved. The six principles that emerged were a reminder that
Christian service calls for self-sacrifice and is always to be re-
garded as a vocation and not primarily as a means of livelihood.
The delegates insisted, however, that all salary scales be based
as far as possible on need, and that the minimum salary for each
class of workers allow the worker to live adequately.
When one is far from the field where these problems consti-
tute part of the fabric of daily living, and when one reads of
them in well heated homes where there is no hunger, one finds
it difficult to appreciate the poignant urgency with which the
churches must seek to correct certain grossly unfair discrepan-
cies that occur in remunerations to Christian workers. The
writers of this book have been in correspondence with a Chinese
Christian friend, the father of a family of eight, who remains at
his teaching post in a theological seminary even though his
salary is sufficient to care for his family's needs for only five
days of each month. Because of his ability he has been offered
by the government and by secular institutions positions that
would allow him and his family to live in comparative luxury,
Yet because of his deep commitment, he continues with his
work in a Christian institution, when to do so means denying
his older children the privilege of college and forcing them to
help support him and the rest of the family for twenty-five days
of every month. The problem here, as it is in thousands of
similar cases, is acute and must be faced boldly.
PARTNERS IN OBEDIENCE IIJ
In surveying the task of the world church one must recall,
too, that the war wrought an unusual change in the financial
status of some churches.- In the past the older churches have been
blessed with relatively abundant financial resources, while most
of the younger churches have had to struggle to maintain even
partial financial support of their work. The war, however, has
brought desperate poverty to some of the older churches. Grate-
ful for what has been given to them in the past and moved by
the distress of their brethren, some of the younger churches
have contributed to the restoration and recovery of afflicted
older churches. The stories of such gifts are reminiscent of the
offerings from the younger churches that Paul took to the parent
church at Jerusalem when that church stood in need.
At Whitby, for instance, the Reverend W. M. P. Jayatunga
of Ceylon suggested that younger churches send gifts to the
church in Germany in token of Christian love and a partnership
shared together. In reply, Dr. Hartenstein of Germany thanked
Mr. Jayatunga and related how one church in India last year,
when its members heard through a Swiss missionary of the suffer-
ing of the German church, used its surplus funds of the previous
year for the work of the German church and then sent additional
sums of money and food through the Swiss. The Reverend
Hickman Johnson of London related how the Methodist Board
of Missions in England had received $7,000 from several younger
church congregations for the assistance of those who had lost
their homes through bombing. The collection for the English
began with the suggestion of a child in a Sunday school in
Colombo, Ceylon.
Again and again Whitby delegates unanimously underscored
the pressing necessity for thoroughgoing education in Christian
114 TOMORROW IS HERE
stewardship in every church. The consecration of material
wealth by Christians must be insured by adequate stewardship
training. Whitby also called on the younger churches to take
every means at their command to increase their own financial
resources. When one recalls that not more than 15 per cent ot
the 55,000 younger church congregations in the world are
entirely self-supporting, he can readily see the necessity for
immediate consideration and aggressive planning by the younger
churches to meet this problem. Training and nurture in Chris-
tian stewardship are essential from childhood. Today one must
always envision his stewardship against the background of the
urgency of the total world-evangelistic task.
But the need for an equally vigorous campaign of stewardship
training in the older churches is also imperative. There are
literally millions of church members in the older churches
whose purview simply does not include any portion of world
evangelism. The missionary movement has long been a minority
enterprise within the church from the standpoint both o^
candidates for service in the lands of the younger churches, anc
of those who voluntarily contribute for the support of missions-,
The church has been granted a moment of unprecedented^,
opportunity precisely because the world stands in such fatalistic
fear of its own diseases. The church can seize its opportunity only
when every Christian lives the total stewardship to which his-
acceptance of God's redeeming grace in Christ commits him.
Partners in Personnel
When a new geographic area becomes the center of an evan-
gelistic task in the lands of the younger churches, the aim must
always be to bring into existence at the earliest possible moment
PARTNERS IN OBEDIENCE 115
a self-governing and self-propagating church. The period of
missionary tutelage for such a new church, allowing for the
adequate development of leadership, should be made as brief
as possible. Responsibility for leadership must then pass from
the hands of the missionary to the leaders of the local Christian
community. Obviously, the future of the younger churches
depends on their local leadership. One must recognize regret-
fully that in many younger churches the leadership available
is not adequate to meet the complex and difficult demands
confronting a small Christian minority in a predominantly
non-Christian land.
There are many tasks to which the younger and older churches
in partnership must give themselves. One is paramount. The
task to which absolute primacy must be accorded is the enlisting
and training in the younger churches of leaders fully equipped
o bear the heaviest burdens. On that point Whitby was
uphatic. This means a new determined effort in the younger
urches to recruit young men and women for Christian service,
provide more adequately for their training — including
th ordained and lay members — and to procure for them
lolarships in the great educational and theological centers
the world.
Not without reason, the continuing problem of the younger
lurches is the recruiting of ministers. Christians in the lands
. the younger churches, living on an economic level much
jwer than that of their fellow-Christians elsewhere, are hard
put to support a church and a pastor. Furthermore, the role of
the pastor is new in the minds of most people. Young persons
are more readily attracted to Christian service in teaching or
medicine. Then, especially when a church is weak and depend*
1 1 6 TOMORROW IS HERE
ent, the ministry is not likely to command the attention of
the ablest young Christians. But it is only through superior
leadership that the churches can be lifted to new levels of
spiritual and economic power. A weak church attracts only a
mediocre ministry. The primary consideration is to solve this
problem, to break the vicious circle that it produces, and to re-
cruit an able ministry. Because this problem cannot be elimi-
nated overnight, the younger churches must place much greater
stress than heretofore on training laymen for unpaid positions of
major leadership in the churches.
The New Missionary
In the tomorrow that is here the missionary who goes to
serve in the younger churches has a somewhat new, yet old,
role. In the first place, while retaining the closest relationship
with his home church, he should become a member of the
church that he is to serve; during his period of service in that
church he should give it his full allegiance and consider himself
subject to its direction and discipline. In the separately prepared
reports of the younger and older church groups at Whitby this
point was most strikingly agreed upon, in both thought and
wording. The missionary becomes fully a member of the
younger church to which he is called and becomes, equally with
his brethren in that church, eligible for any position to which he
may be summoned by the church.
In the second place, the missionary must be ready for pioneer-
ing tasks. There was a time when the missionary broke all the
new ground in the lands of the younger churches. Then, as
some leadership in the younger churches came to the fore, it
became apparent that wherever possible the younger church
PARTNERS IN OBEDIENCE 1 1/
leaders should be responsible for new work undertaken in their
home land. Mission boards made much of the necessity of
having the missionary accept a subordinate role and of having
him serve primarily to develop indigenous leadership. Much
stress was laid upon the missionary "'specialist." The encourage-
ment and establishment of local leadership are still, obviously,
the primary jobs of missionaries in the younger churches.
However, if Whitby made one thing clear, it was that in the
lands of the younger churches the magnitude of the immediate
task confronting the church demands far more than the leader-
ship now available in these churches plus auxiliary missionary
assistance. Pioneers — missionaries and nationals — are needed
on every frontier, in geographical areas as well as in the develop-
ment of new kinds of work.
There was a time when the missionary went into a new field on
his own. He was the missionary leader. More recently he has
been regarded as ancillary to the national leaders of the younger
churches. Today, however, "the missionary,'* whether Indian
or British, Chinese or American, is regarded as an agent of the
church universal. He is one of the specially trained members of
the "shock troops" of the church. He is commissioned by one
part of the church for service in another part. He becomes a full
member of the church to which he goes and a co-worker on a
par with the nationals of that church. His primary allegiance is
to the church in which he becomes a member. And when that
church has an important work to be done, whether in teaching,
in the pastoral ministry, in administration, or in pioneer evan-
gelism, it assays its available manpower and appoints the man
best qualified for the task regardless of the land of his birth.
Here it becomes the responsibility of the older churches with
Il8 TOMORROW IS HERE
their greater manpower in leadership to make available to the
younger churches those who by their gifts and talents are best
suited for service with the younger churches. No longer does an
older church send a "missionary" in the former sense to a
younger church. Today it is a case of the world church reallo-
cating its available resources and using those resources where
they are most urgently needed.
One such area of need is pioneering in the lands of the younger
churches. Korea, for instance, has 40,000 unevangelized villages.
People there are open to the Gospel as never before. Korea
wants 40,000 Christian evangelists for that work. Now the
Korean church is one of the outstanding examples of a self-
supporting, self-propagating younger church, but it cannot
begin to supply all the workers needed. Korea wants Christian
pioneers, whatever their nationality. And one hears^the same
urgent plea from Japan, from China, from India, from Africa,
and from Latin America. This is not the problem of a single
denominational mission board. This is not a problem for a
national church alone. This is a matter of total mission strategy
for the world church in the tomorrow that is here. The church
needs more thousands of pioneering workers today than it has
needed at any time in its past history.
Partners in Policy and Administration
The main lines of missionary policy were given in the command
to make disciples of all nations and to teach them all that Christ
commanded. Each church is committed to the total evangelistic
task. Today that means the conversion of nominal Christians
and the recovery of vast areas that have fallen away from
Christianity in the lands of the older churches, as well as the
PARTNERS IN OBEDIENCE
proclamation of the Gospel to those who have never heard it
and the winning of them to the Christian faith. There is one
task. It is only emphasizes that differ in various countries. While
the x)lder churches still have much to contribute to the life of
the younger churches, they need in the fulfillment of their
charge the rich spiritual resources that are being developed in
the younger churches. Indeed, part of the wonder of the to-
morrow that is here lies in the fact that the church in the
United States and the church in England need a Kagawa quite
as much as the church in India needs a Stanley Jones. This
truth grows ever more apparent.
Opportunities far beyond the good beginnings already made
must be created for younger church leaders to visit in older
churches, to enter into and understand the life of those churches,
to bear their own distinctive witness to numerous congregations,
and to meet for consultation with mission boards and church
leaders. Already some churches have invited ministers of the
younger churches to serve their pulpits as temporary pastors or
to teach in their theological seminaries for longer or shorter peri-
ods. The time has now come when denominational mission boards
should follow the example of some of the great interdenomina-
tional bodies and invite recognized leaders of the younger
churches to serve as consultants and secretaries for a length of
time to be worked out with the church concerned. All such devel-
opment of these exchanges is to be encouraged.
The inviting of younger church leaders for temporary service
in lands of the older churches is never, of course, to be pursued
to the detriment of the younger churches. The movement of
leaders from younger to older churches and from younger to
other younger churches must always proceed within the frame-
110 TOMORROW IS HERE
work of the total world mission of the church. The allocation by
priority of available personnel will be to those areas where that
personnel will most effectively aid the total mission. This is the
new two-way movement of "missionaries" in the tomorrow
that is here.
Today church leaders are working in a new frame of reference.
The recent past has seen the emergence of a world church —
an ecumenical Christian fellowship as. broad as the inhabited
world. Increasingly, those who serve the churches will do so
with a consciousness of their allegiance to this fellowship rather
than to a particular denomination in a particular country.
The old distinction between the national pastor and the "mis-
sionary" is rapidly disappearing. Both are laborers in a partic-
ular country for the church of Christ whose Gospel is for all
the world. In the same way the old distinction between "send-
ing" and "receiving" churches and "older" and "younger"
churches is passing. Yet in accordance with God's provision of
varying gifts in different individuals that Paul understood so
well, in the tomorrow that is here different members of the world
church will have varying responsibilities and contributions.
The course of Christian history makes one evident fact of
today outstandingly significant. In the years ahead responsi-
bility for leadership in world-wide Christianity will pass more
and more to the churches today designated "younger." Thus it
has always been. And the rapid rise of the younger churches in
the last forty years to a position of influence in world Chris-
tianity makes the movement all the more apparent. The tomor-
row that is here is the tomorrow of the younger churches.
Chapter Seven
NEXT STEPS
WHAT ADDITIONAL CONCRETE STEPS SHOULD BE
taken to carry out the obligations that are placed on
Christians of both older and younger churches by
the eternal Gospel in the tomorrow that is here? Whitby recog-
nized the responsibilities. It faced the urgent challenge. It took
account of the resources that are to be found in the Gospel
and the world-wide extent of the church. It then outlined the
next steps in the world mission of the church. At first sight
some of these may appear pedestrian and dry. However, for
those who are willing to exercise their imagination and to try to
see behind the bald statements something of what each involves,
they become exciting, even breath-taking. In naming them,
logical order is difficult if not impossible. All are important.
Evangelism
First of all, every feature of the program was designed to
reinforce evangelism. Evangelism was the major emphasis of
Whitby. By evangelism is meant obedience to the Great Com-
mission. This includes not only preaching but also making
disciples and teaching the observance of the whole range of the
commands of Christ. The commission is as broad as the human
race. To carry it out completely would transform aU human
life. Although the delegates at Whitby were relatively few and
TOMORROW IS HERE
fully aware from hard personal experience of the power of the
forces opposed to the Gospel, they dreamed and planned in
terms of the inhabited earth. Although many of them were
administrators, responsible for carrying through what was rec-
ommended, they did not quail before the Herculean assignment.
Literature, Visual Aids, Movies, Radio
In the proclamation of the word, both old and tried instru-
ments were recommended and new devices were singled out for
attention. The Bible, as always, was foremost. Because of the
war, a shortage of Bibles has developed in more than one
country. The supply must be replenished. Further aids for
teaching the Bible must be developed. Other Christian litera-
ture must also be produced. The need is partly for the discov-
ery, encouragement, and training of authors and partly for ob-
taining a wider circulation of the literature that already exists.
Among the new devices are the radio and visual aids, including
moving pictures.
Race Relations, Rural Life, the Family
All aspects of life demand the attention of the church if it is
to be true to the entire scope of the Great Commission. One of
the most clamant of these, obviously, is race relations. Many
missionaries are addressing themselves to the problem in one
area or another, and in some places progress is being achieved.
Among these encouraging instances are sections in the South of
the United States and even in South Africa, where the tensions
are as acute as in any place on the face of the earth.
What is often termed rural reconstruction is another major
challenge. The vast majority of mankind live in rural areas.
NEXT STEPS
They must be reached by the Gospel and the fabric of their lives
made over. To do these things, education must be adapted to
the need of the people, methods of agriculture improved, fam-
ily relations bettered, and a community centered about the
church.
Not only in rural but also in urban areas must the church
address itself to the family and seek to permeate it with the
Gospel. So far as possible, the entire family must be Christian.
Too often the individual has been won while his family has re-
mained outside. Christian ideals of courtship, marriage, home
life, and the rearing of children must be inculcated.
International Relations
Of major importance to our age is the field of international
relations. In more than one way the churches have been active
in promoting better order among the. nations. Of first-class sig-
nificance has been the fashion in which the world-wide church
has maintained and strengthened its fellowship during the wars
and tensions of the present century. The presence of the mis-
sionary has made for a "reservoir of good will." In hundreds of
local congregations mission study classes have brought sympa-
thetic understanding of other peoples. Through its Commission
on the Bases of a Just and Durable Peace, the Federal Council of
the Churches of Christ in America has been stimulating and
coordinating thinking in the United States on the application
of Christian principles to the international scene. In the summer
of 1946 there was instituted, by the International Missionary
Council and the World Council of Churches, the Commission
of the Churches on International Affairs. Thanks largely to the
initiative and energy of its director, Professor Nolde, it is al-
1X4 TOMORROW IS HERE
ready making headway, through the United Nations, on the
vexed issue of religious liberty. Its activities must be enlarged to
bring the informed collective opinion of the churches to bear
on the international situation.
Schools and Hospitals
Clearly those characteristic features of missions — schools
and hospitals — must be continued. In some countries the gov-
ernment is gradually taking over these responsibilities, but
in other countries missions still provide most of the modern
medical care and the larger part of the schooling. Even where
the government carries the major part of the load, the Christian
forces must pioneer in new ways and with fresh methods.
Schools are one approach to the intelligentsia. If the church is
to be faithful to its commission, it must win to its side the best
minds of the country. Providing schools is one way of accom-
plishing this purpose.
We must add that in every land, whether of the older or the
younger churches, one of the pressing and constant problems
is to keep Christian schools and hospitals Christian. For many
reasons, the drift toward secularization is strong. Those in author-
ity must always be on the alert, not only to check the drift but
also to improve the Christian quality of the institutions.
Personnel
Of primary importance in evangelism is personnel. In our sur-
vey of the world we met this in country after country. In the
lands of the younger churches, as we saw in the last chapter,
literally tens of thousands of men and women, both clerical and
lay, are needed, not only to staff existing congregations but to
NEXT STEPS IZ5
reach out in untouched areas and groups. Among the unevan-
gelized are thousands of villages, many industrial centers* and
great sections of the intelligentsia. To reach these, personnel
must be enlisted and trained. Moreover, financial support must
be found. Some of this aid will come from the older churches,
but the economic base of the younger churches must be so
broadened that self-support can be achieved. In many places,
as we have suggested, this will entail a form of organization dif-
ferent from that in the older churches, with greater responsi-
bility on trained laity than is usual in the latter.
At Whitby the representatives of the younger churches were
insistent in their request for missionaries from the older churches.
The number imperatively needed totals thousands. When one
recalls the small minorities that most of the younger churches
constitute in their respective lands, the reason for the demand
becomes clear. Missionaries must be provided to fill needs that
the younger churches as yet are too small to meet on the large
scale that the urgency of the situation demands. They are
required for immense areas where the name of Christ has never
been known and where the only hindrance to the preaching of
the Gospel is the lack of a messenger. They are needed to take
advantage of opportunities in lands where at present marked
open-mindedness prevails but may not continue for more than
another ten or fifteen years. They are wanted for areas, such as
those of the mass movements among the depressed classes and
the hill peoples of India, where thousands are being gathered
yearly and where more would come if only adequate provision
were made for instruction and shepherding. They are requested,
too, to help in training leaders. The very best from the older
churches are demanded. By "best" is meant not only native
12,6 TOMORROW IS HERE
ibility, although here the standards must be of the highest, but
dso and primarily Christian devotion and character.
Here mention must be made of the importance of providing
ields for German missionaries. Through the late war many areas
:hat had been German mission fields became closed to them,
f et hundreds of German youths are offering for missions and
;ome of the funds for their support have been subscribed. Out-
ets must be found for qualified German candidates. This may
nean financial assistance from other older churches.
The Orphaned Missions Fund
This discussion of German missionaries leads to a discussion
>f the Orphaned Missions Fund. As we have seen earlier, through
L magnificent outpouring of aid that transcended denomina-
ional and warring national barriers, that Fund saved numbers
>f lives and many units of the missionary enterprise. Part of
he need has passed. With the ending of the war, contacts have
>een restored between the missionaries and their home con-
tituencies. Gradually an appreciable number of German mis-
ionaries have been repatriated. However, it is still impossible
or German societies in particular to secure exchange for the
upport of a substantial number of missionaries still abroad and
t work. Thus for some time to come the Fund must be con-
inued so that persons and projects that otherwise might
>erish may be preserved.
Money
The Whitby program demands money. It requires more ex-
snsive funds today than ever before. This is partly because of
ae rising price level and consequent mounting costs the world
NEXT STEPS
around. To maintain the world- wide work of the church today
at the level of earlier times would require many more dollars
and pounds than it did then. But the church must not be con-
tent with its former achievements. To be so would be recreant to
the Gospel and the Great Commission. The^program, as we have
been saying, must be greatly expanded and at once. Such a pro-
gram calls for the giving of money on a much larger scale than
ever before, and by both older and younger churches.
Priorities
Are there any priorities in this program? Shall the church
specialize in areas where the opportunities seem to be unlimited
and where the numerical returns appear to be greatest? At
present and indeed for the past several decades, the folk of prim-
itive and near-primitive culture have yielded the largest re-
turns. Tremendous numerical gains have been made and are
being made in the islands of the Pacific, in Equatorial Africa,
among the depressed classes and the hill tribes of India, and
among the hill tribes of Burma. In China, where the old culture
has been crumbling rapidly and spectacularly, the advance has
been substantial and the door is open in unprecedented fashion.
Because of the unique situation in Japan, that country has sud-
denly become one where millions, many of their old founda-
tions gone, are ready as never before to listen to the Gospel.
Shall we abandon some areas and groups or be content to mark
time where the resistance is such that few converts are made,
as is true of much of the Near East? To a lesser degree it is also
true of the upper castes of India, of the Burmese, and of the
Siamese.
The Jews are a special category. Their sufferings, greater than
12.8 TOMORROW IS HERE
those of any other ethnic or cultural group in the past decade
and a half, and the fact that thousands have lost all religious
faith, make them singularly compelling. Yet not many have
become Christians. Here and there are exceptions, some notable,
but no striking mass movements of any size are taking place.
In the United States, where the large majority of the Jews
are now to be found, few attempts are being made to win them.
In some church circles such efforts would be discouraged, for
fews and Christians are held to have so much in common in their
belief in God and in their veneration of the Old Testament that
to seek to win Jews is regarded as impertinent proselytism. Yet
to surrender to this view would be to give up what is essential
in the Gospel. If the church really believes the Gospel, evange-
lism — regular parish evangelism — must include the Jews.
As the issue of priorities is faced, missed opportunities of other
;enturies come to mind. One was the opportunity we had to
:onvert the Mongols in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.
They had built the widest empire known to man up to that time.
[t covered much of Asia and part of Europe. Some of the Mon-
gols were Christians, and the religion of the rest was of the prirn-
tive kind that easily yields to a higher faith. A few among the
Christians in Europe saw the opportunity and tried to seize it.
iad they succeeded, much of Asia might today be Christian.
3ut they were too few and went unheeded by their fellows. The
Vlongols became either Buddhists or Moslems, and remain so
:o this day. Are we now in danger of missing similar opportuni-
ies?
In answering the question of priorities we must at once say
hat we can never tell where, from the standpoint of the long
uture, the most significant gains are to be made. In the sixth,
NEXT STEPS 12.9
seventh, eighth, and ninth centuries the peoples of northwestern
Europe appeared singularly unpromising material for evangel-
ism. No central board of strategy would have focused attention
on them. Yet they were won, and they became the most active
center for the later spread of the faith. In the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries the Thirteen Colonies that later became
o
the United States were an unlikely prospect in any comprehen-
sive world Christian planning. Their population was sparse,
they were not wealthy, and church members were a small
minority. Yet the United States has become the chief reliance
of the church for personnel and funds.
In view of this history, and instances might be multiplied, we
cannot now certainly tell where, from the point of view of the
far centuries, the greatest opportunities lie. What we must do
is attempt to press through those doors into regions that seem
to be the most clamant, but not neglect other areas where for
the moment the returns are slight. We must seek the evangeliza-
tion of the entire world in this generation.
The Ecumenical Reformation
One priority is clear. The building of the world Christian
community must be stressed. Organizationally, this commu-
nity, as we have seen, is most inclusively represented by the
International Missionary Council and the World Council of
Churches. Both are young, and the latter, although active, is
still technically in process of formation. The budgets of both are
small. Neither is equal to that of a large city church. The
churches have not yet given liberally to them. Fortunately,
each body has attracted able leadership.
One of the current problems is the relation of these two
130 TOMORROW IS HERE
bodies to each other. The utmost friendliness exists. Many of
those active in one are also prominent in the other. Each needs
the other. The World Council of Churches, as is natural, is pri-
marily Occidental and is centering its attention on western
Europe, where so much of relief is imperative. If it is to deserve
its name, however, it must reach out into the entire world and
have evangelism at its heart. This necessity its leaders recognize.
Provision is made for membership of younger as well as of older
churches, with representation of the younger churches in the
initial meeting of the Assembly to be held in the summer of 1948
much larger than their numerical size would warrant. Yet the
World Council of Churches cannot specialize on the younger
churches as does the International Missionary Council. The latter
is imperative for the carrying out of the world mission of the
church. On the other hand, the International Missionary Council
needs the World Council of Churches, for the latter performs
functions that the former cannot properly or as readily under-
take. Among these are relief to the churches in Europe and the
handling of relations with the Orthodox and Old Catholic
churches. It seems probable that each will continue its separate
existence for at least some years, but that even closer collabora-
tion will be arranged. The problem is largely one of adminis-
tration. In both organizations the will is present to solve it in a
way that will make for the enlargement of the world Christian
fellowship and the fulfillment of the Great Commission.
Of supreme importance in any program for the future are
the deepening and broadening of the life of the church. The new
reformation of which we have spoken is the most urgent of the
next steps. Some one has recently termed it the" ecumenical
reformation." By that is meant the world-wide extension of the
NEXT STEPS 131
Christian faith, the carrying out of the Great Commission, and
the increasing collaboration of Christians in that commission.
Collaboration in the Christian sense makes essential a growing
unity in the world-wide church. This does not mean that all
Christians must come into one of the existing communions.
Nor does it entail uniformity of worship or even of creed. Ob-
viously it must leave room for great variety, for Christians
differ in their backgrounds and in their tastes. The unity must
be far deeper than organization. Although organization may
help unity, it may also impede it. What is of supreme importance
is the unity of love that is the crowning fruit of the Spirit. Be-
cause of our imperfect human nature this unity is extraordinarily
difficult to achieve. Yet it is not impossible. Whitby was a dem-
onstration that it can be attained. It is love that is born of pro-
found and grateful wonder for the love of God in Christ, and
of a humble, glad acceptance with a complete dedication to the
Giver. And as that love is seen in the Fellowship, binding to-
gether men and women of many nations, races, and cultures,
the most compelling witness is given to the power of the spirit
of God in the eternal Gospel of Christ.
Chap Per Eight
MR. AND MRS. CHRISTIAN ENTER
TOMORROW
WHAT DOES ALL THIS MEAN FOR THE MEMBER OF THE
local church? What can the church member do to
help share in carrying out the Great Commission?
What part, if any, can he or she have in insuring that the church
shall take the next steps that were outlined in the last chapter?
At present the overwhelming majority of the members of
churches in the United States and the British Commonwealth
— in other words, those for whom this book is primarily in-
tended — have very slight, if any, interest in the world mission
of the church. Their time is absorbed in their business, their
family, their clubs, the local church, and the affairs of the com-
munity in which they live. Even the pastors have their minds
and hands mainly occupied with the problems of their parishion-
ers, of their congregation, and of the village, city, or neighbor-
hood in which they reside. This situation is to be expected and
to a certain degree is to be commended. Yet it has meant that
the main burden of the world mission of the church has been
carried by only a small minority. The total financial contribu-
tion of the older churches of Protestantism to the work of the
church in the lands of the younger churches — what is usually
called foreign missions — has seldom been more than seventy
million dollars a year. Most of it has come in small sums, but were
MB.. AND MRS. CHRISTIAN ENTER TOMORROW 133
only seventy thousand persons of the hundreds of millions oi
Christians to give an average of one thousand dollars a year
each, the total would be met.
The great rank and file of church .members do not take the
Great Commission seriously. Nor can we expect that they will
easily learn to do so. We can hope for an increase in the number
of those who do, but unless we have a sweeping reform and
revitalization of the church, for many years to come — perhaps
not until after the tomorrow that is here has in turn become
yesterday — the majority of professing Christians will not pay
more than lip service to the obligation to share the Gospel with
all men. That will be too late for millions who will in the mean-
time die without hearing the Gospel. It may be too late to save
civilization. Hitherto evangelism overseas has been a peripheral
interest of the church; henceforth it must become a central
concern of every congregation.
What can those do who really believe in the world mission of
the church? Most of those who read these pages are among that
number.
First, all must go about their daily tasks aware of the entire
world and of the mission of the Gospel to all mankind. This
does not mean that they will neglect duties to their families and
to their immediate neighborhoods. As a rule, those who are
willing to live in terms of the entire world and to help shoulder
its burdens are the most sensitive to needs immediately about
them. All too often otherwise "good" people are indifferent to
the evils in the world at large, and even near at hand. They may
not know of them, or, if they know, they fail to acknowledge
any responsibility for doing anything about them. Herein is one
of the reasons for the mass tragedies of the day. The "Society
TOMORROW IS HERE
of Those Who Care," as it might be called, is small. Yet every
Christian, if he or she is true to the faith, is automatically a
member of it. The Christian's concern must be as broad as the
inhabited world. "All must go and go to all."
In the next place, this minority of those who care must not be
content with the indifference of their fellow church members.
They must seek to enlist the interest of others in the world
mission. Every Christian must be an evangelist and the entire
church must be missionary. Impossible though this goal may
be, we must not be content with stopping short of its attain-
ment. This can come only through a basic, thoroughgoing
reformation. The church must be reconverted. It must be
reconverted in every generation, but especially in the genera-
tion that is here. The world situation is urgent and will brook
no delay. The ecumenical reformation waits for those who have
this conviction as a burning passion.
In the next place, we must see to it that every local congrega-
tion becomes enthusiastically conscious of membership in the
world-wide church. This duty, indeed, is a corollary of the obli-
gation of the entire church to be missionary. Each local congre-
gation must dream and work in terms of the world and must be
vividly and actively aware of being a vital unit in the universal
church. This by no means entails lack of loyalty to a particular
denomination. Every denomination has a contribution to make
to the universal church. No one denomination is a full expres-
sion of the Gospel. Each must become conscious of being part
of that fellowship in Christ that is broader than any one denom-
ination or the sum of all the denominations.
One way in which all can contribute is through the giving of
money. Attention has often been called to the fact that Ameri-
MR.. AND MRS. CHRISTIAN ENTER TOMORROW 135
can and British Christians are spending many times more on
nonessential amusements and luxuries than on the spread of the
Gospel. This is especially marked in the United States and
Canada. The money spent by church members on such items as
movies, tobacco, soft drinks, and alcohol would finance the
world mission of the church on a scale many times its present
dimensions. The contrast is particularly striking between this
indulgence by professing Christians and the present dire need
for physical relief among the majority of the population of the
globe. Stewardship in "the unrighteous Mammon" is one of the
primary obligations of Christians. For many it means that
"giving" must not stop^with a tithe of one's income, but must
go far beyond it. Christian stewardship is recognition of the fact
that all that we have, whether of time, money, energy, or abil-
ity, is a trust, and that in all expenditure we must seek first of
all the will of God. This may even mean, in the United States,
giving to relief and foreign missions priority over some of the
new church construction that is proceeding on so large a scale.
In their giving, some of the smaller denominations with few
or no wealthy members are a rebuke and a challenge to the
larger ones.
Giving must not stop with money. It must include the dedi-
cation of life. Indeed, the latter should precede the former, be-
cause to the true Christian the use of money is simply a phase of
the total commitment of life. If this commitment is genuine and
intelligent, thousands more will be offering from the older
churches to serve in what is usually known as foreign missions.
Parents must dedicate their children as well as themselves to the
world mission. As Christians, with that respect for the sanctity of
another's life that comes with the Christian faith, they will
136 TOMORROW IS HERE
not coerce their children into this service. Yet they must so sur-
round them with the atmosphere of the Gospel and of the world
mission that they will feel response to it to be natural, even
though not easy. When children so respond, parents must wel-
come the response and not, as is the manner of some, be grieved
by it and even oppose it. How many of the children in Mr. and
Mrs.j^Christian's church think of being missionaries with the
same naturalness they think of being physicians, lawyers, or
engineers?
In the yesterday that is immediately behind us, thousands,
among them many of the choicest spirits in the colleges, uni-
versities, and theological seminaries, were caught up in the
Student Volunteer Movement for Foreign Missions and had as
their watchword "the evangelization of the world in this genera-
tion. " That was the greatest outpouring of life for the world-
wide spread of the Gospel that the United States and the Brit-
ish Commonwealth have ever known.
The tomorrow that is here demands an even greater outpour-
ing of life for the world mission. It need not be channeled
through the Student Volunteer Movement, although that fel-
lowship is recently having a fresh access of life. It need not —
indeed, it probably will not — be through any one organiza-
tion, but through many. Yet, if the church is to rise to this age
that is upon us, it must experience the profound renewal and
reform that will spontaneously issue in a similar offering of life.
In connection with the amazing day that is called Pentecost
and to which later generations have looked back as the birth-
day of the Christian church, the words of an ancient prophecy
seemed peculiarly appropriate: ", . . your young men shall see
visions and your old men shall dream dreams; and on my
MR. AND MRS. CHRISTIAN ENTER TOMORROW 137
servants and on my handmaidens I will pour out in those days of
my Spirit." We often think of visions as the special prerogative
of youth. Visions go naturally with the vigor and exuberance of
youth. Old age, "when all the wheels run down/' seems hatu-
rally to be a time of pessimism and of cynicism. Yet there is a
quality in the Spirit of God that inspires even the aged with
dreams and gives to the visions of youth a special quality. The
"servants" and the "handmaidens," whether old or young,
"prophesy" — they speak as inspired and empowered by God.
Something of that spirit of prophecy was seen at Whitby.
John R. Mott, from his vantage of more than eighty years of
watching the working of God's spirit, and in spite of — indeed,
through — his extensive and repeated travels, including those
of these recent tragic years that have made vivid to him the
travail of the world, was the most daring and confident of that
daring and confident company. That was palpably because he
had allowed himself to be controlled by the Spirit and so to be
used by God across the decades in astounding and quite super-
human fashion. The more youthful of the Whitby gathering
also saw visions that were world-embracing. They envisioned
"the evangelization of the world in this generation" in even more
inclusive terms than did the Student Volunteers of an earlier
day. They saw that the Great Commission means not only pro-
claiming the Gospel to every human being now alive, but also
making disciples of them and teaching them to observe all that
Christ commanded the intimate circle of his followers to observe.
Fantastic? Yes. But so to "the wise" is the Gospel itself.
"Where is the wise man? Where is the scribe? . . . Has not
God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since, in the
wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom,
138 TOMORROW IS HERE
it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those
who believe. . . . We preach Christ crucified, . . . the power
of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is
wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men."
It was through what looked to the prudent like defeat that
God worked for the accomplishment of his purpose in the salva-
tion of men. It was thus on that first Good Friday, that first
Easter morn, and that first Pentecost. It will be thus in that to-
morrow that is here. God's thoughts are not men's thoughts,
neither are his ways their ways. His word shall accomplish that
which he pleases and prosper in the thing whereto he sends it.
Who will allow himself to be caught up into that company of
those who see as God sees and act as he acts? For them, as for
their Master, there will often be the cross of seeming frustration
and defeat. He has said that those who would be his disciples
must daily take up their crosses and follow him. They will
know the fellowship of his sufferings. But they will, with him,
be God's instruments in that kingdom in which God's perfect
will is done and share with him in the wonder and power of
that resurrection that is endless abundant life. That life, because
it is God's life as seen in Christ, will not be hoarded by those
who possess it, but will be given, as Christ's is given, for the
life of the world. The Great Commission is possible because it is
from God and because the crucified and risen Christ is with
those who seek to obey it.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
Chapter One
1. Is mankind really living in "One World"? Explain fully the reasons
for your position.
2. Describe the characteristics of the revolution in which mankind
is caught. Are these the characteristics of normal change? Do
they mark the passing of an age?
3. In a very real sense nationalism and secularism are religions. As
Christianity is viewed in the totality of its world setting, which
is the more serious competitor, the new religions of nationalism
and secularism or the old religions as typified by Islam, Hinduism,
and Confucianism?
4. How is one to explain the fact that within thirty-five years two
world wars with all their attendant horrors have arisen in the
countries that have traditionally been regarded as Christendom?
Have movements for international peace and human welfare
within these countries actually balanced the demonic de-
struction of life and character wrought by war? Are such
movements to be found in those countries regarded as "non-
Christian"?
5. What factors underlie mankind's search for security? Can full
security be achieved without limiting individual freedom? What
constitutes full security for a Christian?
Chapter Two
1. Should the Christian church in the West seek to arrest the .ap-
parent decay of Western civilization? Why? What effect in the
past has the dissolution of a civilization had on the church?
2. What is likely to be the long-run effect of the decline of Western
Europe on world Christianity? What does this mean for the
church in America?
3. Are Christianity and communism actually antithetical? If so,
how? Can the church flourish in a communistic state?
I4O QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
4. Have Protestant Christians a right to send missionaries to Latin
America when that vast region is regarded by many to be already
Christian? Indicate the reasons for your position.
5. The impingement of Western culture upon Africa has caused a
widespread breakdown of the old African patterns of living. What
has this meant for Africa? Is Africa a fairly typical example of what
has happened in other non-Occidental lands where Western culture
has penetrated? What is the significance of this for the future of the
Christian church?
6. Christianity is a world-wide community. How would you convince
a skeptic of this fact?
Chapter Three
1. What is the relationship of the missionary society in the local
church to the denominational board or society? From this point
trace the relationship of the local society to the International
Missionary Council.
2. How is one to explain the lack of tension and the complete una-
nimity of spirit at Whitby in contrast to similar meetings after
World War I? Has this any particular meaning for world Chris-
tianity today?
3. What would be the value of a local "Whitby"? How would one go
about arranging a city-wide or state-wide meeting that would
parallel Whitby in its international, interracial, and interdenomi-
national character?
4. Of what significance for the church is the new experience of one-
ness in a common task between members of the younger and the
older churches? What is the task?
Chaffer Four
1. What did Jesus mean when he spoke of the kingdom of God?
2. Describe as fully as possible what is meant by love (agape) as the
New Testament uses that word.
3. How must the church interpret the eternal Gospel to mankind
today? Can the message of the Gospel actually be made meaning-
QUESTIONS FOB. DISCUSSION
ful to all men? What danger lies in seeking to translate the Gospel
into the current idiom?
4. How may it be said that the task of world-wide evangelism is
impossible? How may it be said to be assured? Is this a contradic-
tion in terms?
Ghafter Five
1. What is meant by a first-generation Christian? In the final analysis,
can any Christian be other than a "first-generation Christian"?
2. Is it possible to achieve the full meaning of the Christian experi-
ence apart from other Christians? If not, why not?
3. Why is it that one who has experienced the new life in Christ
cannot contain it within himself? What evidence do these six
testimonies provide at this point?
Chapter Six
1. Describe the change in relationship between older and younger
churches that Whitby symbolized.
2. Within the common task, what special emphases are for the older
churches? For the younger churches?
3. What problems peculiar to the lands of the younger churches
make it especially difficult for churches in those lands to be self-
supporting. Has this any bearing upon stewardship training in the
older churches?
4. What is the role and what are the distinguishing marks of the
new missionary? What is meant by the "two-way movement"
of missionaries?
Chapter Seven
1. Whitby placed greatest stress upon evangelism. Precisely what is
evangelism and what does it include?
2. What are the major channels through which the churches are seek-
ing to influence government to effect better international relations?
3. What are the needs of the world church for new personnel? What
can the local church do to see that these needs are met?
142. . QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
4. Of what importance are geographic or group priorities in the world
mission? What is meant^by the ecumenical reformation?
Chapter Eight
1. Is there any special way in which your own local church could
^contribute significantly to the total world mission of the church?-
fin material aid? In ideas? In personnel?
2. Theoretically, ten tithing families can support an eleventh whose
energies can be directed solely to the fulfillment of the church's
world mission. On this basis, what are the potentialities of your
church for supporting workers in the world task of the church?
Can you personally do something to improve the situation
locally?
3. There is nothing mysterious about a "call" to service in the world-
wide work of the church. God can touch the hearts of those per-
sons whose minds are factually and vividly aware of the needs of
the church and the world. In light of the imperative need for
thousands of the ablest young people, what immediate steps can
you take to make known to such young people the poignant
urgency with which the younger churches are requesting literally
tens of thousands of new workers?
4. From whom is the renewal of life to come in your church?
A REFERENCE LIST
Azariah ofDornafyil, by Carol Graham. Fascinating story of the great
Anglican Indian bishop. London, Student Christian Movement
Press, 1946. 6s.
Advance through Storm, Volume VII of The Expansion of Christianity,
by Kenneth S. Latourette. A.D. 1914 and after, with concluding
generalizations. New York, Harper & Brothers, 1945. $4.00.
Bringing Our World Together, by Daniel J. Fleming. A study in world
community. New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1945. $2.00.
Can Christianity Save Civilization? by W. M. Horton. New York,
Harper & Brothers, 1940. $2.00.
Challenge of Redemptive Love, The, by Toyohiko Kagawa. Nashville,
Abingdon-Cokesbury Press, 1940. $1.50.
Christian Global Strategy, A, by W. W. Van Kirk. A challenge to the
churches. Chicago, Willett, Clark and Co., 1945. $2-00«
Christian Imperative, A, by Roswell P. Barnes. Our contribution to
world order. New York, Friendship Press, 1941. (Out of print, but
available in some libraries.)
Christian Message in a Non-Christian World, The, by Hendrik Kraemer.
New York, International Missionary Council, 1947. $3.50.
Christian Mission in Our Day, The, by Luman J. Shafer. A realistic
consideration of the place of the church in the postwar period.
New York, Friendship Press, 1944. PaPer 75 cents.
Christian Missions in Today's World, by W. O. Carver. New York,
Harper & Brothers, 1942. $1.50.
Church Faces the World, The, edited by Samuel McCrea Cavert. New
York, Round Table Press, 1939. $1.50.
Church Must Win, The, by Charles T. Leber. The place, power and
promise of the Christian church in the conflict of our time. New
York, Fleming H. Revell, 1944. $1.75.
Committed Unto Us, by Willis Lamott, The challenge of evangelism
today. New York, Friendship Press, 1947. Cloth $1.50; paper $1.00.
Evangelism. New York, Department of Evangelism, Federal Council
of the Churches of Christ in America, 1946. 10 cents.
144 A REFERENCE LIST
Evangelism, Volume III of the Madras Series. New York, Inter-
national Missionary Council, 1939. $1.50.
Evangelism for the World Today, by John R. Mott. A symposium of
viewpoints. New York, International Missionary Council, 1939.
$2.50.
Family and Its Christian 'Fulfilment, The. A symposium published by
the Foreign Missions Conference, 1945. Cloth $1.00; paper 60 cents.
For All of Life, by W. H. and C. V. Wiser. This informed and skillful
study describes Christian ventures in many lands that seek to bring
the gospel to bear on all of life. New York, Friendship Press, 1943,
Paper 50 cents.
God's Candlelights, by Mabel Shaw. An educational venture in
Northern Rhodesia. New York, Friendship Press, 1945. Cloth
$1.25.
Heritage and Destiny, by John A. Mackay. New York, The Mac-
miilan Co., 1943. $1.50.
Highway of Print, The: A World Wide Study of the Production and Dis-
tribution of Christian Literature, by Ruth Ure. The opportunity for
literature Evangelism. New York, Friendship Press, 1946. Cloth
$2.00.
Is the Kingdom of God Realism? by E. Stanley Jones. Nashville,
Abingdon-Cokesbury Press, 1940. $2.00.
Kingdom without Frontiers, The, by Hugh Martin. The witness of the
Bible to the missionary purpose of God. New York, Friendship
Press, 1946. Cloth $1.25; paper 75 cents.
Larger Evangelism, The, by John R. Mott. Nashville, Abingdon-
Cokesbury Press, 1944. $1.00.
Living Religions and a World Faith, by W. E. Hocking. New York,
The Macmillan Co., 1940. $2.50.
New Buildings on Old Foundations, by J. Merle Davis. A handbook
on stabilizing the younger churches in their environment. New
York, International Missionary Council, 1945. $I-75*
On This Foundation^ by W. Stanley Rycroft. The Evangelical witness
in Latin America. New York, Friendship Press, 1942. Paper 75
cents.
A REFERENCE LIST 145
Outline of Missions, An, by John Aberly. Philadelphia, Muhlenberg
Press, 1946. $3.00.
Pathfinders of the World Missionary Crusade, by Sherwood Eddy. Life
stories of forty missionaries, with side lights on the Student Volun-
teer Movement. Nashville, Abingdon-Cokesbury Press, 1945. $2.75.
Philosophy of the Christian World Mission, The, by Edmund D. Soper.
Nashville, Abindgon-Cokesbury Press, 1943. $2.50.
Prayer, the Mightiest Force in the World, by Frank C. Laubach. New
York, Fleming H. Re veil, 1946. $1.25.
Religious Liberty: An Inquiry, by Searle Bates. New York, Inter-
national Missionary Council, 1947. $4.50.
Shrine of a People's Soul, The, by Edwin W. Smith. A story of the
little known work of missionaries in many countries who have
mastered unknown tongues, reduced them to writing, and given
the Bible to their peoples in translation. New York, Friendship
Press, 1947. Cloth $1.50; paper $1.00.
Silent Billion Spea\, The, by Frank C. Laubach. Literacy in evan-
gelism. New York, Friendship Press, 1943. $1.25; paper 75 cents.
Sir, We Would See Jesus, by Dr. Daniel Thambyrajah Niles. A study
in evangelism. London, Student Christian Movement Press, 1938.
Paper 2s.
They Found the Church There, by Henry P. Van Dusen. The armed
forces discover Christian missions. New York, Charles Scribner's
Sons, 1945. $1.75.
Way of the Witnesses, The: A New Testament Study in Missionary
^Motive, by Edward Shillito. New York, Friendship Press, 1947.
$ Cloth $1.25; paper 75 cents.
Witness of a Revolutionary Church, The. Statements issued by the
Committee of the International Missionary Council at Whitby.
New York, International Missionary Council, 1947. 20 cents.
World Christianity, Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow, by Henry P.
Van Dusen. A summary of the historical interplay of Christian
unity and the enterprise of missions, with a clear-cut view of trends
in contemporary Christianity. New York, Friendship Press, 1947.
Paper $1.00.
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